On the heel of studies indicating that earthly life likely originated in space comes an new report which suggests life might exist in the interstellar gas or on stars themselves.
The New Journal of Physics reports a computer model of microscopic, electrically-charged dust particles injected into a plasma indicates they will self-organize into double-helix structures, and even reproduce and evolve. But scientists are hesitant to characterize these systems as alive.
If this is a form of life, I wonder if it is flexible enough to form complex organisms. It's exciting to think about. As Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute said,
We've always assumed that life was a planetary phenomenon. Only on planets would you have the liquids thought necessary for the chemistry of life," he said. "So if you could have life in the hot gases of a star, or in the hot, interstellar gas that suffuses the space between the stars, well, not only would that be 'life as we don't know it' but it might be the most common type of life.
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