I'm going to suggest that you can take it a bit further away from "life as we know it" even than you suggest.
This sort of question gets you wondering how you define life. Obviously not DNA for instance. But is "self replicating" the right way to characterize life either? After all crystals self replicate in a way. And - does life have to be able to self replicate?
As a thought experiment, imagine that a cell evolved, and on our Earth the identical cell would be able to replicate, but for some reason in its own environment it never is able to, maybe because some other form of life evolved first, and gobbles it up. Or that to replicate it requires some chemical not available in the environment it evolved in. Was it a lifeform?
So what if it is almost identical to that, it's almost identical to an Earth cell, but is not able to replicate because of some flaw in it, in all other respects identical to a living cell, able to move around, eat, etc, but can't replicate - is it life?
What if there are numerous "organisms" one of a kind like that, but none of them are able to replicate at all, they just are spontaneously generated in their environment which is for some reason conducive to formation of cell like "creatures"? But not conducive to formation of replicating cells? Is this life?
What if they aren't structured like cells at all, but have no well defined boundaries? Do they have to be able to metabolize, eat etc? What if they don't need to eat, and are able to move around, do things etc, but don't need food as we do. Just a source of energy in order to be able to move? Just using electricity or a pressure gradient or gravity or whatever?
When it's so hard to define what life is, I think it's a bit hard to say definitively that we won't find life in particular situations.
But there's another strand here also. Tendency to define life in terms of a form of "computation". But - I think you can argue that humans are not computers. Based on the arguments of Roger Penrose, John Lucas and indeed Godel himself, that a computer program, or algorithm, can't "understand truth".
So if you go with this (I know many won't but some do, myself included) - that algorithms are not sufficient for truth - well what about taking it yet one step further, are they even necessary? What about the possibility of understanding truth without an algorithm? Is that somehow possible, some sort of pure intuitive awareness without having to compute?
And then another idea here - what about awareness and consciousness? Does something have to be life in order to be aware?
It's not clear at all what awareness is, we all know it directly. It doesn't seem to be linked to computation - you aren't more aware when you have more complex thought processes.
In some ways, you are most aware in the simplest most direct experiences, such as experience of pain or pleasure or a bright light etc - experiences so simple a microbe can probably share them. From ones own experience - and again I know many are so sold on the "computational model of awareness" that they simply can't contemplate the possibility of awareness that doesn't depend on computation. But if you look into your own experience, it doesn't feel like a computation. You become less aware if anything if deep in complex computations.
I know that those who say that it is based on computation will say that - that's just because we aren't able to access the computations going on - that when you are aware of a bright light there's lots of complex computation going on and that's what makes you aware - though not aware of the computations themselves. But what if they are wrong there? (I mean not wrong that there's lots of complex stuff going on that we aren't aware of of course, our bodies and brains are very complex nobody denying that - but wrong about the nature of awareness, wrong about this basic idea that beings become aware when the computations they engage in are sufficiently complex in some yet to be defined way?)
What if awareness is just as it feels to us, something simple? But not yet understood by science?
So if awareness can be as simple and direct as that - is it possible that a solar flare could somehow be "aware"? And then maybe, if there was some possibility of interaction with its environment, to then show volition?
Roger Penrose thinks that our ability to be mathematicians is due to quantum mechanical collapse of the wave function - but not due to quantum computing. (Quantum computing, using entangled qubits, it's been shown, only speeds up calculations and doesn't introduce anything essentially new).
It's more a gravitational thing in his ideas. Whenever you have a Planck mass of matter then the quantum state has to collapse. But in a non computable way - in other words a process that can never be simulated in a Turing machine or computer. Any attempt to simulate the physics of it algorithmically with a program of some sort would fail, because it is non computable (that's what non computable means - and there are many things in maths that are non computable).
So - what if there is something non computable like that going on in the sun? Would that also be a form of awareness?
I've no idea. Nothing like what goes on in our brains surely. Even our brains are rather warm for quantum entanglement, seems it is just about possible though. At the high temperatures of the sun, is quantum entanglement like that even possible (if Roger Penrose is right that entanglement and then collapse is needed).
Or could there be, in some way, some other kind of non computable physics going on in the sun, somehow?
One thing that gives pause for thought here - look at how rapidly our science has developed over the last few centuries. In the nineteenth century they had no idea that there even was such a thing as an electromagnetic wave or radar. It's not so long ago, just two centuries ago, that the most rapid form of communication was using these:
For many years, when you talked about the "telegraph" you meant the semaphore telegraph. We still have many hills called "Telegraph hill" because they had semaphore telegraph towers on them, back in the day, for sending urgent messages. Semaphore line
Two centuries from now, who knows, maybe a lot of our present understanding, radio and so on, may be as archaic seeming as these semaphore telegraphs.
Then think about where our science could be a million years from now of continuous development of technology.
For those reasons I'd hesitate to say that life or intelligence or awareness is impossible for beings of some sort living inside a sun. Though there is absolutely no evidence of it of course. And it's more that I think we may get surprises as great as this in the future - rather than I think that we will find living beings in the sun particularly.
And our science fiction can help to open minds to possibilities. Science fiction only rarely lets us see true glimpses of the future I think, it is a work of imagination after all, but it does help to open our minds to possibilities for the future.
Science fiction stories exploring life inside or on stars:
For more on the idea that a program can't understand truth, and some consequences of that if true, see my If A Program Can't Understand Truth - Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence Babies
This sort of question gets you wondering how you define life. Obviously not DNA for instance. But is "self replicating" the right way to characterize life either? After all crystals self replicate in a way. And - does life have to be able to self replicate?
"However, some initial agreement is possible. Living things tend to be complex and highly organized. They have the ability to take in energy from the environment and transform it for growth and reproduction. Organisms tend toward homeostasis: an equilibrium of parameters that define their internal environment. Living creatures respond, and their stimulation fosters a reaction-like motion, recoil, and in advanced forms, learning. Life is reproductive, as some kind of copying is needed for evolution to take hold through a population's mutation and natural selection. To grow and develop, living creatures need foremost to be consumers, since growth includes changing biomass, creating new individuals, and the shedding of waste."
Life's Working Definition: Does It Work?
As a thought experiment, imagine that a cell evolved, and on our Earth the identical cell would be able to replicate, but for some reason in its own environment it never is able to, maybe because some other form of life evolved first, and gobbles it up. Or that to replicate it requires some chemical not available in the environment it evolved in. Was it a lifeform?
So what if it is almost identical to that, it's almost identical to an Earth cell, but is not able to replicate because of some flaw in it, in all other respects identical to a living cell, able to move around, eat, etc, but can't replicate - is it life?
What if there are numerous "organisms" one of a kind like that, but none of them are able to replicate at all, they just are spontaneously generated in their environment which is for some reason conducive to formation of cell like "creatures"? But not conducive to formation of replicating cells? Is this life?
What if they aren't structured like cells at all, but have no well defined boundaries? Do they have to be able to metabolize, eat etc? What if they don't need to eat, and are able to move around, do things etc, but don't need food as we do. Just a source of energy in order to be able to move? Just using electricity or a pressure gradient or gravity or whatever?
When it's so hard to define what life is, I think it's a bit hard to say definitively that we won't find life in particular situations.
But there's another strand here also. Tendency to define life in terms of a form of "computation". But - I think you can argue that humans are not computers. Based on the arguments of Roger Penrose, John Lucas and indeed Godel himself, that a computer program, or algorithm, can't "understand truth".
So if you go with this (I know many won't but some do, myself included) - that algorithms are not sufficient for truth - well what about taking it yet one step further, are they even necessary? What about the possibility of understanding truth without an algorithm? Is that somehow possible, some sort of pure intuitive awareness without having to compute?
And then another idea here - what about awareness and consciousness? Does something have to be life in order to be aware?
It's not clear at all what awareness is, we all know it directly. It doesn't seem to be linked to computation - you aren't more aware when you have more complex thought processes.
In some ways, you are most aware in the simplest most direct experiences, such as experience of pain or pleasure or a bright light etc - experiences so simple a microbe can probably share them. From ones own experience - and again I know many are so sold on the "computational model of awareness" that they simply can't contemplate the possibility of awareness that doesn't depend on computation. But if you look into your own experience, it doesn't feel like a computation. You become less aware if anything if deep in complex computations.
I know that those who say that it is based on computation will say that - that's just because we aren't able to access the computations going on - that when you are aware of a bright light there's lots of complex computation going on and that's what makes you aware - though not aware of the computations themselves. But what if they are wrong there? (I mean not wrong that there's lots of complex stuff going on that we aren't aware of of course, our bodies and brains are very complex nobody denying that - but wrong about the nature of awareness, wrong about this basic idea that beings become aware when the computations they engage in are sufficiently complex in some yet to be defined way?)
What if awareness is just as it feels to us, something simple? But not yet understood by science?
So if awareness can be as simple and direct as that - is it possible that a solar flare could somehow be "aware"? And then maybe, if there was some possibility of interaction with its environment, to then show volition?
Roger Penrose thinks that our ability to be mathematicians is due to quantum mechanical collapse of the wave function - but not due to quantum computing. (Quantum computing, using entangled qubits, it's been shown, only speeds up calculations and doesn't introduce anything essentially new).
It's more a gravitational thing in his ideas. Whenever you have a Planck mass of matter then the quantum state has to collapse. But in a non computable way - in other words a process that can never be simulated in a Turing machine or computer. Any attempt to simulate the physics of it algorithmically with a program of some sort would fail, because it is non computable (that's what non computable means - and there are many things in maths that are non computable).
So - what if there is something non computable like that going on in the sun? Would that also be a form of awareness?
I've no idea. Nothing like what goes on in our brains surely. Even our brains are rather warm for quantum entanglement, seems it is just about possible though. At the high temperatures of the sun, is quantum entanglement like that even possible (if Roger Penrose is right that entanglement and then collapse is needed).
Or could there be, in some way, some other kind of non computable physics going on in the sun, somehow?
One thing that gives pause for thought here - look at how rapidly our science has developed over the last few centuries. In the nineteenth century they had no idea that there even was such a thing as an electromagnetic wave or radar. It's not so long ago, just two centuries ago, that the most rapid form of communication was using these:
For many years, when you talked about the "telegraph" you meant the semaphore telegraph. We still have many hills called "Telegraph hill" because they had semaphore telegraph towers on them, back in the day, for sending urgent messages. Semaphore line
Two centuries from now, who knows, maybe a lot of our present understanding, radio and so on, may be as archaic seeming as these semaphore telegraphs.
Then think about where our science could be a million years from now of continuous development of technology.
For those reasons I'd hesitate to say that life or intelligence or awareness is impossible for beings of some sort living inside a sun. Though there is absolutely no evidence of it of course. And it's more that I think we may get surprises as great as this in the future - rather than I think that we will find living beings in the sun particularly.
And our science fiction can help to open minds to possibilities. Science fiction only rarely lets us see true glimpses of the future I think, it is a work of imagination after all, but it does help to open our minds to possibilities for the future.
Science fiction stories exploring life inside or on stars:
- David Brin's Sundiver - life inside the sun
- Arthur C. Clarke's "Out of Sun" - living tangles of magnetic flux
- Stephen Baster's Ring - creatures of dark matter inside stars
- Forward's "Dragon's Egg" - if you call a neutron star a star - then that uses a chemistry of nuclei for tiny intelligent very fast living lifeforms.
For more on the idea that a program can't understand truth, and some consequences of that if true, see my If A Program Can't Understand Truth - Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence Babies
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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