Wouldn't it be funny if there ended up being a plastic-based life form and they wondered how they came to be...
Wouldn't it be funny if there ended up being a plastic-based life form and they wondered how they came to be...
...and they COULD NOT think of a natural process that could produce plastics in the environment in the amounts required to produce life?
Their science would never dream of how it happened.
There technically has always been natural plastic. Polymers. Rubber is an obvious one. But chitin, DNA, silk, sulfer can become plastic, etc are all polymers.
"Achully-ness" aside. It would be wild to find a plastic based insect. It would probably finally unite all of humanity against a singular cause. I doubt we have enough bombs though.
There are sea snails living near volcanic vents that metabolize the extra iron into shells and plating. I expect we'll see a similar adaptation at some point. Simple organisms issuing plastic in some sort of process that toughens their shells. If left unchecked we may see an evolutionary leap as more things adapt, and a die off as plastic becomes a finite resource. Future generations may argue the merits of artificially supporting the microplastic ecosystem in the same vein that we argue about reducing it.
I agree. It's bound to happen, life tends to take advantage of any situation available.
You've got an interesting idea regarding future generations. I can totally see that happing. Nice thought
magcargo real???
Fascinating premise for a game or movie
Won't be long now until we are plastic based life forms.
Considering everyone's sperm is bathing in plastic rn, who knows lol.
This is a perfect shower thought, thank you
Reminds me of this short sci fi story I just recently listened to on a podcast.
That's the story in text. If you want to hear it read to you, it's CZM Book Club: The Plastic People by Tobias Buckell out on 23 Dec 2023.
Reminds me of Code of the Lifemaker, where mechanical life evolves on Titan. Seemed oddly plausible when I read it, but it's been 20+ years. LOL, maybe it was stupid.
Love CZM and everyone involved!
Same! I originally just tried to limit myself to BtB, but then I listened to ICHH to learn about the Unicorn Ranch, and I ended up learning about so many other topics. Then I kept seeing interesting CPWDCS, so now I listen to some of those.
They turn out so much great content every week, and ICHH has really helped me to better understand more people and issues than I ever would have been able to on my own.
And discovering that plastic surgeons somehow came first....
This is like what I've been saying, how do we know the microplastics are bad for us? Could be our final form...
It might be the answer we've been looking for!
Probably not.
But maybe!
There's no way plastic based life forms don't emerge from one of the garbage patches, given enough time.
There's a short story by Ted Chiang called Exhalation which explores an idea somewhat like this. I highly recommend it.
Toy Story 5: After the Apokalypse
Thank you for not just trying to redefine basic words as a post.
To your thought, Im not sure if it’d be funny so much as existentially tragic—however plastics are both chemically complex and (as far as I understand) fairly inert so not sure if a form of life could develop with them as their base, so hopefully no such cursed creature will ever walk the physical spheres of the universe we inhabit.
There are pretty much inert because they're ignored by most proteins and are largely stable enought to resist chemical damage (oxydation is the big one). This is the reason we make so much of them, they're useful as containers and it's cheaper to make new containers rather than reuse the old ones.
That being said, it could happen that some biological processes start using plastic as an energy source and/or process it for parts. This is already done in labs with plastic eating bacteria today, where the bacteria produces enzymes capable of breaking the molecular bonds in some plastics.
The main factor is that there is considerably less plastic readily available than there is carbon dioxide, because the carbon dioxide is just there, but in a hypothetical future where the earth is covered in several inches of plastic, chances are that single cell organisms that thrive off of plastic could realistically evolve.
Now would be a good time to start watching Doctor Who (2005) if you haven’t yet 😂
I watched through Peter Capaldi, and quite a few of Jodie Whittaker, if not most.
Plastic is defined by the fact that it's not biologically produced, but if you remove that qualifier there's tons of existing items that should qualify.
Not a chemical engineer, but think along the lines of latex/rubber/etc.