Unlike solution chemistries, there are an enormous variety of different physical environments in which plasmas can exist, indeed, they are the only way in which matter can exist in those environments. If complex structures can arise and persist in such regimes they would have many advantages over chemically based organisms. For example, the time scales and volumes of space in which these processes operate could be enormous, giving more opportunities and niches for diversity. Communications between different subsystems could be much faster, relying directly on speed of light energy propagation and electric and magnetic fields. At really large, say galactic, scales, these plasma metabolisms would appear so slow to us (due to the finite speed of light and gravity) that we would not notice them as being "alive", we wouldn't be watching a movie, we would always be studying archival snapshots.

How would "plasma biology" manifest itself? Would we even recognize it if it was staring us in the face? How would we design new observations and experiments to test these speculations? Are there observed physical processes now which could be better explained by this hypothesis? If plasma organisms exist, can plasma intelligences and consciousness be far behind?

One of the things that has always struck me about nature is its complexity and diversity, and there is no a priori reason why this should be so. Even the simplest structures and processes, when studied in detail, reveal dazzling and intricate subtleties and infinite layers of interlocked relationships. At every step in our study of these phenomena, we find the simple laws of physics always hold, there is no need to resort to supernatural or paranormal explanations; but we still find it difficult to explain how this need for nature to frustrate entropy seems so ubiquitous. Maybe we're on to something here.