New life, and new life forms

This is actually exactly the kind of topic I love. To start with answering the question of life diversity we should consider what sources of energy are available? I can think of a few in these few minutes before I have to go. Electromagnetic, gravitational, kinetic, dark and whatever else I've forgotten. Not sure anyone even knows what dark energy is much less what sort of complexity could be living off of it...I'll be back for more later, great topic.

A series of concentric Dyson spheres around a star collecting all of the available electromagnetic radiation and doing some kind of complex activity with it, would be a good form of life. Multiple stars doing this and then networking those would be next. I suppose filling up a galaxy would be after that.

I wonder to what extent life could exist within stars (of various types) and interstellar ionic dust clouds. Or even 'lava monsters' within the molten cores of planets or moons. It would just be another type of molecular bonding, I guess.How could you identify life? On a certain scale Earth itself is alive, Gaia hypothesis. Subbie is the discussion about communicative 'intelligence?'Edited by CosmicChimp, : more stuff

Yes I agree, "highly unlikely." But let's try to feel for the edges. I want to explore what could be the extremely unlikely possibilities as well as carbon based forms. Oddly this topic crops up frequently in my day dreaming. Years ago, I happened upon an article in an online encyclopedia concerning various schemes for life-like complexity based upon a scale of higher/lower temperatures pressures/densities, and 'solvents'. Sadly I can't access the article anymore. From it I recall that Hydrogen bonding (and I suppose ionic bonding) plays a greater structural role at lower temps. Carbon carbon double and triple bonding at higher temps and pressures etc. Liquid methane, sulfuric acid and ammonia could easily be used under cold world conditions as solvent. Much to my chagrin the details of whatever I used to know from Chem eludes me.Also to Subbie:
I'm not so sure reproduction should limit the scope of our definition of life as maintaining and adapting an existing 'body' or structure could also be seen as life/living.Edited by CosmicChimp, : clarity

Yeah I think at all levels to acquire the complexity of life you need to have a process of innovation supplying whatever variables are possible and selection from among those. The innovation part is, I would think, iterative and similar to reproduction. However, the reproduction we know with DNA etc and the incomplete copying during it in order to achieve the 'innovation' may not be absolutely necessary, especially under very stable and unchanging environmental conditions.The innovation could come from some other source. I keep envisioning crystal growth or something like silicone chip manufacturing processes where only the extremities are modified. New layers to the lattice would have to vary and thus supply the novelty which would then be kept or not kept. Obviously a leap has to occur somewhere in that process to get the kind of huge chain reaction life that we know.The machine planet that perfected Voyager and made it V'Ger I can only imagine had to start out much simpler, and gain its high level of complexity via reproduction, which you might call iterative innovation.