Life Spans

[Zetal]

Alien life spans. Would they be the same as ours, or somewhere around turtles?
Perhaps thousands of years, like trees?

[D17]

It would be more interesting if they had a shorter lifespan.

Future nanotechnology will be the way to keep defected cells from multiplying and organs from failing.

But a race with a short lifespan who manage to build a civilization. Now that is mindbaffling!

[DaleyPaley]

Interesting. I think it would be impossible to guess an alien's lifespan. It depends on many things.

I read a great book called "Dragon's Egg" by Robert Forward. In it, a race of alien called 'Cheela' live on the surface of a neutron star. Because of the high gravity, physical processes like chemical reactions work faster so a Cheela lifetime is just a few of our seconds.

On the other hand, there is no upper limit on life. Huge dinosaurs probably had long lifetimes, as to big trees like the giant redwood. There might be aliens out there as big as continents. You never know.

There might also be immortal creatures, especially if they have developed the technology to defeat death. I think it's highly possible we will get to that point too within the next few hundred years.

[Halfbaker]

Nanotechnology is not needed for emortality, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomerase and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere#Telomere_shortening.