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[Askot Bokbondeler]

aren't there nebula several times the size of our galaxy mainly composed of water, a lot of which is in liquid state and at earth-like temperatures? like, huge, galaxy sized space oceans? where life can evolve separately in several different pockets, several lightyears apart from each other, and go for trillions of years without meeting, but basically in the same body of water?...

[FearfulJesuit]

aren't there nebula several times the size of our galaxy mainly composed of water, a lot of which is in liquid state and at earth-like temperatures? like, huge, galaxy sized space oceans? where life can evolve separately in several different pockets, several lightyears apart from each other, and go for trillions of years without meeting, but basically in the same body of water?...

Holy shit really? That's...

...that's fucking awesome. Where the hell would you get your energy from, though? Can water molecules do fusion?

See, now I'm imagining a sci-fi novel about these civilizations that all live in a giant galactic water bubble, and in the very center of it is a water sun where the pressure has become so great that the water is undergoing fusion to warm the whole bubble, but after billions of year it will have eaten so much water and become so big that the water bubble will basically become steam and everyone in the galaxy dies.

[miauw62]

What do you get when you fuse water and water, tough?

Either way, don't we have strange alien-like things that use arsenic (name is probably fucked up) instead of phosphorus?

[FearfulJesuit]

What do you get when you fuse water and water, tough?

Phlogiston, of course!

[Darvi]

I'd really like to see a source for that statement about aquatic nebulae.

[TheBronzePickle]

The thing about life is that, while there's a lot of room for differences, in the end most life (at least life that hasn't become technologically advanced enough to change the rules about how their life works) is going to be similar enough to be recognizable, at least elementally. Hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen are the building blocks of most life for a reason: they're the only elements that work for life as we know it.
Silicon can't replace carbon because silicon's a semimetal. It cannot form the bonds carbon needs to for life, at least not without some very specific environmental requirements that would probably null a lot of the other necessities of life.
Hydrogen and oxygen are needed for water, which isn't strictly required for life, but is required for anything more advanced than microbes, and hydrogen is also a major component in many carbon compounds. Oxygen's effectively the perfect mix of ability to bond and ability to not dissolve other molecules necessary for life doing it.

[FearfulJesuit]

What about beyond that? Most of our bodies are hydrogen, carbon and oxygen, but nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorous make appearances too...so does other stuff but it tends to be stuff like iron or sodium that's only used in a few molecules in a few applications and we don't possess that much of it.

You kind of wonder if civilization could ever get off the ground in a water nebula, though... for all we know, dolphins may have language or something not unlike it, so the most basic thing that really makes us that different from other smart animals is fire. You might be able to get agriculture (kelpaculture?) started in a water nebula, but metalworking ain't gonna happen.

It does make me wonder what you could find in a water nebula that would allow you to have sentient species at all, really. If it's galaxy-sized, it's not inconceivable that it would contain planets and things it had swallowed up, but could it have stable solar systems in it? I doubt it. Again, energy will be a big problem. Unless you could somehow have bubbles of vacuum that had solar systems in them (how that would work I don't even know.) Then you'd have two different sorts of biosphere: normal ones on normal planets and a bigger, more nebulous, far less diverse one in the cosmic ocean that had been seeded by comets and things that had wandered too far, and with...like...chemosynthetic organisms that fed off the rock with help from the light of distant stars.

On the other hand, once you've got space exploration and a method of propelling your spaceships with fusion, you're golden, because you can never run out of fuel...

[Darvi]

You're talking as if a nebula hadn't the density of a lab-created vacuum.

[FearfulJesuit]

You're talking as if a nebula hadn't the density of a lab-created vacuum.

Oh, yeah.

I dunno, I was just imagining this...giant bubble of water millions of light-years in diameter.

Which would be pretty fucking cool.

[TheBronzePickle]

What about beyond that? Most of our bodies are hydrogen, carbon and oxygen, but nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorous make appearances too...so does other stuff but it tends to be stuff like iron or sodium that's only used in a few molecules in a few applications and we don't possess that much of it.

I'd imagine that those are more replaceable in their functions, depending on the environment. I was just pointing out the core of life is probably going to be founded in those three elements over everything else because they're pretty much perfect for life.

[penguinofhonor]

I think you'd have to have a pretty perfect ratio of star size, moon size, distance the moon is from the planet, and distance the planet is from the sun. I really doubt it's common.

This has always baffled me. Why do people assume that alien life would need to conform to the same standards as Earth life? Fucking waterbears could survive on Mercury, Pluto, Uranus, Venus, or any other planet in our system, why can't an alien lifeform evolve outside this ridiculous 'Goldilocks' zone that everyone believes in? And ALSO, why do scientists assume that alien life would need water? I'm sure these are good starting points or whatever, but alien life will almost certainly NOT follow evolutionary lines from Earth.

Dude, I wasn't talking about life. I was talking about having a complete solar eclipse with a visible corona.

[Darvi]

You're talking as if a nebula hadn't the density of a lab-created vacuum.

Oh, yeah.

I dunno, I was just imagining this...giant bubble of water millions of light-years in diameter.

Which would be pretty fucking cool.

I seriously don't know how you would even imagine that oh wait.

[Helgoland]

I dunno, I was just imagining this...giant bubble of water millions of light-years in diameter.

Which would be pretty fucking cool.

Isn't that how one of the earth creation stories in the bible starts?
"6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse[a] in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven.[c] And there was evening and there was morning, the second day."

[Askot Bokbondeler]

I'd really like to see a source for that statement about aquatic nebulae.

would a cracked article do?
idk. it was something about a black hole, and something something a cloud of mostly water vapour with a billion times our galaxy in size, and with something something something galaxy sized pockets of liquid water...
there were space sharks somewhere in there, i'm sure...

[Loud Whispers]

I'd really like to see a source for that statement about aquatic nebulae.

would a cracked article do?

Never. Also in terms of semantics, nebula are clouds. Wouldn't an aquatic nebula be a really big bubble, like a planet that's entirely liquid? Funky.