Extreme exoworlds and the extremophile paradox

TL;DR

This paper explores the paradoxical nature of extremophiles, highlighting that while they thrive in extreme environments, they cannot originate there, impacting the search for extraterrestrial life and biosignatures.

Contribution

It introduces the extreme environment paradox, analyzing the emergence and presence of extremophiles in extraterrestrial environments and their implications for astrobiology.

Findings

Extremophiles can survive in extreme environments but cannot originate there.

Extreme environments may host chemical evolution without native life.

Non-native extremophiles could serve as chemosignatures or biosignatures.

Abstract

Extremophiles have gained prominence by providing an experimental approach to astrobiology. Extremophiles gain equal value by being part of a framework for high-level characterisation of the evolutionary mechanisms that must necessarily restrict or promote their emergence and presence on solar system bodies. Thus, extremophiles exist in extreme environments, and therein lies the paradox: extremophiles can only live in extreme environments but yet are not able to originate in such environments. Therefore, even though the range of extremophile capabilities in extreme environments is wider than that in mesophiles, the range of their emergence possibilities is still equally restricted. Therefore, even if one locates an extreme exoworld where terrestrial extremophiles could live here-and-now, it can be predicted that no extremophile analogues are present anyway. Furthermore, it is possible for a world to be uninhabited, yet be habitable, and therein arises the extreme environment paradox: an extreme environment can sustain chemical evolution as well as arriving non-native life, yet native life cannot be built up in that very environment. Thus, life may exist on an extraterrestrial extreme world (if imported there), and chemical evolution may be present on that world. However, it can be predicted that there is no native life anyway. This situation can be predicted to function as a chemosignature and eventually as a biosignature. However, the fact that a non-native extremopile in principle can exist in extreme environments may demonstrate that the intermediate step between chemical evolution and extremophiles can still occur in the form of a statistical deviation.