8 Awesome Ways Life Could Be Forming In The Universe

6. On A Gas Giant

In our search for exoplanets, we seem to be finding an awful lot of gas giants - probably because they're much easier to spot. This is disappointing for a lot of astrobiologists, as we tend to limit our search for life to small, rocky planets much like Earth. There are, however, those who think this might be a wasted opportunity, and have hypothesized what life might be like on a gas giant.

Everybody's favourite space uncle, Carl Sagan, and astrophysicist Edwin Salpeter, considered the possibility of ammonia based life forms swimming about in the atmosphere of Jupiter. They thought that the Jovian ecology could be like that of an ocean here on Earth, with different types of creatures that they termed "sinkers", "floaters", and "hunters". These would all "swim" about in the thick, swirling atmosphere, some taking the form of great organic balloons, perhaps even growing to many kilometres across.

Whilst we now think that it's probably unlikely that great sky jellyfish are cruising around Jupiter unnoticed, it is possible that life could evolve on one of the many gas giants in the galaxy. The thick, turbulent atmosphere could act as a rich primordial soup, giving rise to complex life forms that would be born, live and die without ever touching solid ground.