@johnprytz No longer relevant? You mentioned it in your original post. Albeit, on a planetary scale. CHZ may not be as limiting a factor in moving the odds of life existing on a planet or moon above zero. However, the chances of finding life is greatly increased on planets within the Goldilocks Zone.

Jupiter and Saturn are off the table for me because of their size. If you go deep enough to reach an zone where the temperature I above 0, what's the pressure like.

When you're talking about abiogenesis, you almost need liquid-gas interface to facilitate reactions and introduce reagents.

The chance of the discovery of a liquid water aquifer on Mars is our best bet.

@johnprytz If I recall correctly, scientists were hypothesizing that the gravity of Jupiter makes finding carbon based life forms there unlikely. It’s been a while since I read the articles, though. Now that I’m thinking about it, I want to say that they were actually talking about the possibility of methane based life forms.

@johnprytz Hold the phone. Looked it up. They were talking about Titan, not Jupiter. As I said, it was a while ago. [space.com]

@johnprytz Very true, but we have versions of life on Earth that have pretty much that situation. Deep trench geothermal vents have extremophiles who meet the criteria.

All right, you've convinced me. I did some more reading into it, and it seems like the ionizing radiation is more a feature of the planet's magnetosphere than the atmosphere. Like our own Van Allen Belts, it looks like you don't want to be orbiting near the inner moons without effective radiation shielding. The radiation emanating from the planet itself appear to be in the radio wave and microwave bands and non ionizing.

So your hypothesis looks just as likely to me as any other. Maybe there's some tardigrades or something similar floating around there.

@johnprytz What about plants? They love the sun. It seems like the center of the sun would be perfect for them. There could even be plants like Audrey from Little Shop of Horror that feed on blood and everything.

@johnprytz You know, what is today’s fiction may be tomorrow’s fact. There was a movie once called The Right Stuff and it chronicled man’s first journey to the moon. Wouldn’t you know it in 1957 Sputnik was launched and it happened almost exactly as the film predicted.

So I wouldn’t be so quick to discount the notion that a population of Little Shop of Horrors type plants are living in the center of the sun.

@johnprytz Too points. First, yeah I might have got some details wrong. The fact remains that a work of fiction become reality. I must admit though, I never knew we put a man on Mercury. I’ll have to watch that movie.

Second, I’m sure it’s hot inside the sun. It’s probably over 100 degrees. I don’t think I would want to live there because I like jacket weather. I still think plants would love it.

Third, the other night when I was organizing my salt collection I was thinking about what you said about water disassing. Wouldn’t the water fall to the center of the sun? Water is heavier than fire and the sun is made of fire.

@johnprytz I did some research on Ask Jeeves and found out the first hydrogen bomb was made by the Germans and it was called the Hindenburg. There’s even video footage that someone captured on a really old black & white phone. If you watch it you can see people running out of the fire, so it can’t be that hot.

Now you say water can’t survive on the sun, but is water really alive? Well, maybe. I saw a movie called The Abyss, and it had a creature that was made of water. So, I guess it’s possible. People may say water creatures are impossible, but they said the same thing about putting a man on Mercury. Yet we did it, and anyone can look it up on IMDB.

@Heathen_555 It's still an argument from big numbers and glosses over the fact that our database of planets that have known life is one. And SETI keeps coming up with nada. It's certainly possible there is something else out there, but it's also possible that there are as yet unknown factors that made us a unique accident.

Probably not, it's too hot nearer the Sun for life to exist.

@starwatcher-al but the extraenceladusians might not be looking in that direction. they might be looking out the other way, farther from the sun, as they do their wondering. it's a big solar system.

g

@genessa Yup, sure is and we don't know even a tiny bit of what's out there yet.

@starwatcher-al we, of our generation, likely never will. it all takes so long! maybe some day, if we don't blow our own planet up, someone will know a little more.

g

@johnprytz Diurnal rhythms are no inherent problem, but there's still a solid bottom under it all on Earth. I would envision the contents of the Saturnian goldilocks zone occasionally continuing to up or down-well out of said zone. But maybe it's more stable than that.

@johnprytz The cultures inhabiting the Americas when Europeans 'discovered them' were only a few centuries apart but look at what became of those cultures in less than a century.

@johnprytz Correct again, at least in theory, the only way to know for sure is if and when contact with an extraterrestrial species is made.

There is a great sci-fi movie on Titan called "Gattaca", although it's more of a philosophical-ethical movie, imo. It's one of my all-time favorites!

@Darius77
I must check this out, thank you for the heads up.

@johnprytz
Data from NASA's Cassini probe has strengthened the probability of there being liquid water beneath the frozen surface.