I don’t mean on the planets – but in space. On Star Trek, they came across creatures that lived in space, away from the stars and planets. How likely is it for life to develop in the emptiness of space? If it is likely, would the life be as large as is portrayed on Star Trek? (Some of the creatures were as big or bigger than the starship itself).
Since the only type of life we know about is our kind, it’d be hard to answer. But I don’t see why it would be impossible. What does life need? Animals need food and oxygen. Plants need CO2, light, water and trace amounts of other materials. But if you put them together in an ecosystem, the system as a whole only needs energy. So one could theoretically design a life form that can live in space. Moving about without wasting water is not easy, but can be done with solar sails. Growing and reproducing would require additional raw material though. Way out beyond the orbit of Saturn there is probably a lot of “food” (water and “organic” compounds). Striking a balance between having enough food and having enough sunlight may be tough, but probably not impossible.
As scr4 says, probably not impossible. But VERY unlikely. Because a lifeform has to expend energy to live. So it must eat or otherwise obtain nourishment. And, so far as we know, nothing lives forever. So to continue the species, it would have to generate little lifeforms.
Of course, God has no wife as far as anyone knows. Which is very interesting since HE is clearly descrived as a male, and what would be the point if there were no Mrs. God? Or, from the feminist viewpoint, what would be the point if SHE had no Mr.God. But I digress.
From what we humans imagine about terrestrial or extraterrestrial lifeforms, they must have liquid water to develop and survive. Usually this is expressed as requiring a ‘friendly’ planet to nurture the evolution process. Said planet cannot be to cold or too hot. It must be ‘just right’. So says the Goldilocks theorem.
Answer number two: No one knows. But it doesn’t matter anyway. We have to be out of this solar system in a mere 4,500 million years. And we have to be out of the Universe within 10,000 million years. In the mean time, I am going to be back, with a pretty good chance that at least one of my atoms will be in every human being and animal that ever inhabit the earth.
The Earth can be said to be a single organism, surviving on sunlight.
So they exist.
Except that the Earth doesn’t reproduce, metabolize, display autonomous locomotion, consume raw materials, excrete waste or respond to external stimuli, unless you really stretch the definitions of these biological terms.
Actually, we might have about 500 million years on Earth before the sun gets too hot…it will become a red giant in the time you’re talking about. Also, considering the universe is most likely “flat” (Euclidean & infinitely expanding), I think we have much longer than 10by before the universe fizzles out.
As to the OP, I agree that it would be difficult for an organism to evolve in space. There may be enough energy (solar) but the raw materials are too thinly spread out. There are speculations that life could form inside comets (may have plenty of organic molecules, add a little radioactive heating, etc.)…which may be close to a non-planet situation. But who knows? It will be fun to find out one way or the other.
Here is a link (hopefully - I’m a rooky at this) to where General Questions last debated this one (or closely related anyway):
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=25996
Have fun with Drake’s Equation !