RedsBeforeFeds t1_iudwcby wrote on October 30, 2022 at 4:21 PM

I always had wondered if our parameters for “life” have just been too narrow. Yes we need water and oxygen, carbon, etc that’s how life has evolved on our planet. But who is to say there couldn’t be organisms that thrive in different atmospheres, born and evolved with different elements, temperatures, or perhaps even in dimensions of time and space that our brains simply can’t comprehend. Hell there could be life all around us right now, we just don’t have the capability to see it. Kind of like that movie Flatland, where the one dimensional line could only see other lines as “points” and that the two dimensional shapes could only see other shapes as “lines”, and that third dimensional beings could only see others as “shapes” and so on. Makes me wonder if time or space themselves are just other dimensions, that maybe there are beings out there living from that perspective, and that’s why it would be so easy for them to slip in and out of our sights and imagination. That maybe our own environment and the billions of years it took for life to take our shape have effectively sealed us off from being able to see a larger picture when it comes to the universe. Would be really interesting if there were creatures that can look right through us through a different perspective and understanding of time itself, maybe seeing it all at once and having a casual ability to manipulate that.

[deleted] OP t1_iudwdko wrote on October 30, 2022 at 4:21 PM

[deleted]

Cevvi t1_iuewj03 wrote on October 30, 2022 at 8:20 PM

Interesting points. I feel we'd almost need a new branch of science, Astrochemistry to get to the bottom of what forms life could take. Non-carbon may still have to be made up of an element in the same group such as Silicon due to its versatility. Huge sentient rocks, maybe even the size of a planet or perhaps sentient asteroids that bypass all our detection of life. I feel advances in chemistry will be the key, we need to know exactly what each element is truly capable of under the different conditions.

The idea of fifth dimensional beings existing outside of time that are almost able to 'look down' at us from above, the same way a 3 dimensional being can physically look down at a 2d being or flatlander, is an amazing thought. The possibility of biological life experiencing time non-linearly is concept I find fascinating, they would be able to know when they die and flit between any point in their lives but their body would still be anchored in one physical point in space. Or that's just one possibility.