[ExI] Double-Earth (Was: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets)

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 07:23:28AM -0800, spike wrote:

> Ja.  I can't think of any life forms that depend on that oddball
> characteristic of water ice.  Perhaps the remarkable thing here is that with
> all the ice on this planet, there are no known (to me) life forms that use
> it in its solid phase.  One would think there would be a snow eater

There is no life in solid phase (yet) since it relies on passive transport.
It also uses diffusion and brownian noise to drive machinery in solvent
phase. Notice it uses 2d solvents (lipid bilayer) as well 3d solvents,
more complicated systems (host-guest complexes) and it also does active
transport, within the solvated paradigm.

If you want life to work in solid state you'll need machine phase systems.
That life can't emerge naturally, so it needs to be midwifed by solvated
life (us) to come into being. We would be a sacrifical stage in its
bootstrap.

> somewhere.  Clearly it wouldn't be to extract energy from the water (ground
> state compound) but rather some kind of life form that can plant itself in
> snow and use sunlight.