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All of us know about the ideas the life to be possible in the frame of the physical laws of this universe with other chemical building blocks - Si, sulfur, amonia...
Under more than 30 bars up to ~4500 bars when solidifyes, the CO2 is liquid at room temperature.
Please direct me to sites and links which envision potential alternative life using L-CO2 solvent.
The idea is connected with the "High pressure terraforming of Venus" thread in Terraformation forum.
Please comment!
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Instead of using a liquid solvent, a very dense, supercritical gas, such as http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003 … o2.htm]CO2 ?
For Venus, http://www.google.com/search?q=supercri … ercritical CO2, at high temperatures, what won't it dissolve ?
Could the life forms on Venus, gradually, have substituted hot CO2 gas for water ?
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Could the life forms on Venus, gradually, have substituted hot CO2 gas for water ?
Anything made of proteins would dissolve in it at 900 degrees. Probably not!
However, liquid CO2 could conceivably persist in Martian polar subsurface layers, is a fairly versatile solvent, and will dissolve water as a solute. Life using a CO2/H20 solution as a solvent is not beyond all possibility. However, we'd probably never find it, given the environments it would need to exist.
"We go big, or we don't go." - GCNRevenger
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Instead of using a liquid solvent, a very dense, supercritical gas, such as http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003 … o2.htm]CO2 ?
For Venus, http://www.google.com/search?q=supercri … ercritical CO2, at high temperatures, what won't it dissolve ?
Could the life forms on Venus, gradually, have substituted hot CO2 gas for water ?
Thank you for the links.
If we envision intracellular temperatures bellow ~43 degrees Celsius, and pressure bellow 1000-2000 bars, than the custom or almost custom proteins can exist. That includes also the supercritical CO2 in ~31 C and above 73 bars.
The pure L-CO2 or SC-CO2 in principle should be able to completely substitute the liquid water in the almost plain life forms if any other hydrogen sourse is present -- for example all these hydrocarbons and oils which these CO2 phases perfectly dissolve. Or CO2/H2O mixtures...
Such CO2 states asside Venus where it is too hot for them can be found underground on Mars. At third of gees one needs to go down about thousand of meters under the regolith or the polar ice cups to find enough compressed CO2 to be liquid...
If such life doesn`t exists in natural conditions, than regarding the High Pressure Terraforming of Venus scenario , see my post in "Terraforming" forum
, we can in principle create it with simple genetical engineering, without synthetical biology - rellying upon utterly non-common building blocks...
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There might already be http://www.gsreport.com/articles/art000035.html]alien life on or inside Venus already.
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With http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/20040 … ml]silicon carbide semiconductors operating uncooled on Venus,
robotic rovers, or planes, are a possibility.
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MarsDog,
http://www.llnl.gov/str/Yoo.html]http:/ … r/Yoo.html
about the CO2-V quarzlike stuff.
The phase state of all materials and chemicals gives quite rich technological opportunities.
This material might have great properties for making Fourth generation termonuclear devices, non-depending for lighting by fissionable material as uranium, or plutonium. Even if the room temperature/pressure stabilization is not possible - deep there in Jupiter, the self-replicating hydrogen bombs robots which you are talking can built their bodies with such materials and after harvesting and colecting the necesarry deuterium to fuse it without fissibles...
But my question was about near-to-room temperature phases of liquid or supercritical CO2 (in order to be compatible with earthly proteins and life)? Can you point me something about this?
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""But my question was about near-to-room temperature phases of liquid or supercritical CO2 (in order to be compatible with earthly proteins and life)? Can you point me something about this?""
No, but I can remind you that supercritical CO2 is used to dissolve the caffein out of coffee beans to make decafe. It's called "the Swiss water process."
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