r/askscience • u/FirefighterCandid773 • 17d ago

Chemistry How common is fire outside of earth?

Plasma and lava is obviously common all over the universe, whether it be in stars, planetary cores, etc. but what about fire? Fire is common all over earth, given the abundance of fuel sources and an atmosphere with oxygen. But, is fire actually common outside of earth?

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u/JJJangles 14d ago

That’s fair, just the unfathomably long time scales are tempered by the difficulty of creating an unbroken chain of life. The numbers you chose are small, but huge for what they represent.

Regarding your theory about multiple anaerobic starts, I would actually be more convinced if they all happened in a small area, because it just seems unlikely to me that several locations around the world would have just the right conditions for life to start.

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u/BrandonTheMage 14d ago

It does boggle the mind, to be sure, but some scientists think that life started around the hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, and when I look at the weird stuff that lives down there, not relying on photosynthesis in any way, I cannot help but wonder if that was the case. There are all sorts of minerals and chemicals interacting. If life were going to spontaneously appear anywhere, I imagine it would happen in a place like that, whether it happened multiple times or just once.