The quick answer to that is, and like I said before, "No, it isn't"... Or at least not "life" as we understand/know it... And there resides the main problem here! Atys is life as we know!
Here are a couple of facts we know about Atys just by looking at the enviroment:
- We can create fire, so there is oxygen present. More or less the same amount as on Earth (20-ish% of the atmosphere)
- There is water, thus there is a good amount of Hydrogen around. We also know that temperature and atmospheric preasure are very similar to those on Earth, after all there is fog, water and snow present. There may be ice, but I'm yet to see it.
From that we know that there are other gases other then Oxygen and Hydrogen as well, after all homins managed to discover fire without turning the whole planet into a short lived inferno
So lets assume that at least must of the Non-Metallic gases (Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen), all of the Noble Gases (From Helium to Ununoctium) and a few Halogens (Fluorine and Chlorine) are present. I left a few Non-Metals and Halogens out of the list because their sole presence destroys the whole idea behind a planet without minerals.
Now, to create life as we know it we need a backbone! An element that can be bonded to other, to form complex molecules. And not only complex molecules, but stable molecules... And at this point is where the whole idea of a planet without minerals crumbles down like a house of cards! Gases and liquid are not enough, we need things like Carbon.
And turns out that Carbon is one of the Non-Metals I left out of the list before, as Carbon by it's lonesome destroy the idea of a life without minerals.
Now, since I don't want to be called a carbon chauvinist I should also mention that it doesn't matter what backbone we're going to be using, the result is always going to be a mineral one way or another.
I'd like to finish this exercise by paraphrasing my favorite books, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy":
"Oh dear," says Atys, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Lemoi, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed at the next zebra crossing.
Anyways, some of the things that I left out of this post are things like how life in Atys has to be carbon based, that there must be metals present, how imposible is for an organism as big as Atys to exist, and how there is no real explanation to the Atys Astronomy except for poor programing
But like I said, Biochemistry and Astrobiology are out of the scope of the previous exercise.And I think that is it. Time to go visit the impossible planet
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