Could life evolve in the vacuum of outer space?

Honestly, the idea of an "energy being" is nothing mroe than an absurdity popularized by the like of Star Trek. I tend to be cautious about ruling something "utterly impossible," but with this concept it's close enough to call the notion laughable.Conscious energy? Energy is not a "stuff" in the same way that matter is; what sort of energy would this sort of "being" be composed of? This is the worst sort of speculation - by what sort of mechanism would an "energy being" hold itself together? How would we recognize it? To me it sounds like nothing more than a fundamental misunderstanding of what energy is.Energy is the potential to do work. Light it not energy, though it has energy. A rock held up high is not energy, but it has potential energy. When dropped, that rock will fall and strike the ground, converting kinetic energy from teh fall into sound and heat (and the sound eventually converts into heat as well). A photon emitted by the Sun will travel in a straight line until it collides with something else, at which point its energy will also be converted into heat.By what mechanism would you propose that an entity, conscious or not, could be comprised solely of the potential to do work?Remember, we are "energy beings" as much as we are "material." That says absolutely nothing of magic nonsense like "souls" or "consciousness;" the fact is simply that our physical bodies process and use energy constantly. The entire issue of "energy beings" vs "physical entities" is nothing more than science fiction - occasionally entertaining, but not grounded in even an ounce of fact.So is it possible? Again, I dislike making solid statements of what is or is not possible - the Universe tends to surprise us frequently. But the concept of an "energy being" quite frankly doesn't even begin to make sense given what energy actually is.As for your video...well, I can't watch it at the moment, since I;m at work. But 99,999 times out of 100,000, there's a conventional explanation for what at first appears to be extraordinary phenomenon. Jumping to wild speculation on the level of "things from dimension x!" or "energy beings" is roughly as accurate as the opinion of a 3-year-old on the equivalence of energy and matter.

EVCForum is not an outlet for degradation - it's a debate forum. The adversarial nature of debate, combined with the anonymity and communication barrier of text on the internet occasionally results in unintentional offense.Your post attracted a decent amount of incredulity simply because of the subject matter - "energy beings" are exclusively the realm of fantasy (including both science fiction and religion), not observed reality. There is no reason to suggest that such things could exist, and in fact based on the physics definition of "energy" the term simply makes no sense. Entities composed of high-energy particles would make more sense, but would still be so improbable as to justify immediate dismissal pending an observational reason to think they may exist or a mechanism that would allow their formation.If you found some of the responses to be personally offensive, my best advice would be to simply not take it personally, and ask why those posters responded the way they did. After all, appealing to personal incredulity is a logical fallacy (as opposed to providing a reason for an incredulous response).You also brought up a YouTube video showing moving objects that you are unable to personally identify. This caused you to break off into what can most accurately be described as unjustified wild speculation - your response to the unknown was to use your imagination. This is the same basic human behavior that led ancient cultures to speculate that lightning was caused by Thor's hammer, and that the Sun was the golden wheel of Apollo's flying chariot. It seems to be a near-universal tendancy in humanity to attempt to explain what we don't understand, even when our explanations have no basis in reality. Pointing that out should not be personally offensive to you - rather, it shoudl remind of one of the many pitfalls inherant in the human thought process. It's no different from any other myriad flaws in human reasoning - pre-existing bias, confirmation bias, false pattern recognition, wishful thinking...the list is long, and we;re all guilty of them from time to time. The trick is to recognize them and try to eliminate them when possible. It's a very large part of the reason the scientific method involved independant confirmation and peer review - even the smartest of people can come to false conclusions based on fallacious reasoning and bias.If at any point my responses to you have been overly acidic, then I apologize.As to your core question though, as to whether life could form in space without being on a comet or an asteroid or other body...That's very difficult to answer, but all evidence I'm aware of points to "not likely." We've barely touched the surface of abiogenesis research, so it's difficult to really pinpoint how life could plausibly form in space. More reasonable explanations for life existing in space would be volcanic eruptions that launch rock into space, possibly carrying living organisms with it (assuming they survive the trip!). But without a body to exist on, actual vacuum-inhabiting organisms are just this side of impossible. Space is just too empty - living things require food of some sort, some form of input of matter to allow growth and reproduction in addition to whatever form of energy they use. Take aplant for example. Photosynthesis is along the lines of what you'd look for in direct energy absorption...but the plant still requires CO2 and other compounds in order to actually photosynthesize, let alone what it needs to add mass and grow and reproduce. The density of molecules in space is extremely low - it makes our air look as dense as diamond in comparison. Most of the molecules found in space are nothing but H2 molecules, with some H2O thrown in. Free-floating organic compounds with the required Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Carbon are far more rare. Frankly, any organism that bears any semblance to the forms of life we've seen so far would simply starve, or be completely dormant while in space. If such a thing were discovered, "unbelievably shocked" would be an understatement for my reaction.