How could organisms use radioactivity as an energy source without DNA damage?

[jlcd]

Godzilla II was shown last month. I watched Godzilla I again. They explained that when Earth was still radioactive, these creatures evolved so their cells could use radioactivity as power source. Do you know of the schematic because I want to understand how the radioactivity can avoid destroying the dna? perhaps they don't even have DNA, or something that can surive radioactivity?

Deep in the ocean, some living things could breath methane from volcano vents. Is this true? Or did I just read in sci-fi about breathing methane.

So living things can adapt to their environment.

Can beings evolved from silicon naturally. Or does it mean any living things made of silicon (from silica) is automatically of artifical intelligence?

We must be prepare to deal with all kinds of possibilies of living things in the galaxy and beyond especially after first contact.

I'm interested in sci-fi where the creatures or entities feed on our emotions (especially negative emotions). So they want to wreck maximum havoc so they can feed more. Like Matrix but not brain in a vat.

I'm bored this weekend. I want to see movies with the above concepts.

 

[member 656954]

Do you know of the schematic because I want to understand how the radioactivity can avoid destroying the dna? perhaps they don't even have DNA, or something that can surive radioactivity?

It does not pay to think through Godzilla too closely, because it is unlikely an animal so large could survive physiologically, irrespective of its power source. But I was initially thinking that its skin might have some kind of barrier against ionizing radiation, but that doesn't work because it can internally create an "atomic heat beam" that it sprays from its mouth and which is itself radioactive.

Not having DNA is interesting, though I'd have thought anything without DNA would have been out-competed by DNA, or it would still be around (admittedly, we've not searched everywhere on Earth for everything that lives, but we've done a lot of searching and no non-DNA life forms have been declared that I'm aware of). Still, Godzilla is a monster, so that's a possibility. However, ionizing radiation knocks electrons about so strong enough radiation damages anything - DNA or not - and Godzilla has been subjected to some very aggressive radioactive attacks across many films and it is obvious it is make of unobtanium. Literally unobtanium because it also survives an atomic bomb being dropped on it, and you are talking serious heat and pressure!

But it is important to consider that Godzilla was devised when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still recent memories in Japan, so Godzilla it was always intended as a metaphor of the evil of nuclear weapons than a well elaborated animal.

 

[jlcd]

It does not pay to think through Godzilla too closely, because it is unlikely an animal so large could survive physiologically, irrespective of its power source. But I was initially thinking that its skin might have some kind of barrier against ionizing radiation, but that doesn't work because it can internally create an "atomic heat beam" that it sprays from its mouth and which is itself radioactive.

Not having DNA is interesting, though I'd have thought anything without DNA would have been out-competed by DNA, or it would still be around (admittedly, we've not searched everywhere on Earth for everything that lives, but we've done a lot of searching and no non-DNA life forms have been declared that I'm aware of). Still, Godzilla is a monster, so that's a possibility. However, ionizing radiation knocks electrons about so strong enough radiation damages anything - DNA or not - and Godzilla has been subjected to some very aggressive radioactive attacks across many films and it is obvious it is make of unobtanium. Literally unobtanium because it also survives an atomic bomb being dropped on it, and you are talking serious heat and pressure!

But it is important to consider that Godzilla was devised when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still recent memories in Japan, so Godzilla it was always intended as a metaphor of the evil of nuclear weapons than a well elaborated animal.

Yes. When I watched that part where Godzilla survived a nuclear explosion. It ruined the movie for it was just so ridiculous. Sci-fi is fun when it can at least make you think.. like Matrix where people have been discussing it for years.

Or maybe something so ridiculous it can make think why it's so ridiculous.

Well. What if Godzilla was made of Adamantium skin. Can Adamantium survive a nuclear explosion? What alloy in the future can produce such skin or armor?

How thick must be the material and what kind of material in existing underground bunkers before it can survive a direct hit from a 50 Megaton nuclear bomb. See: https://www.army-technology.com/fea...-powerful-nuclear-weapons-ever-built-4206787/

1 million years from now. Can't thin structure made to surive direct hit from such bomb? Maybe Godzilla was artifically created with skin armour from such 1 million A.D. civilization, isn't it?

 

[Rubidium_71]

Possibly of interest, there is some evidence for radiosynthesis in nature...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus