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Comment by thriftwy | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the actual sentient life in universe lives deep within those rogue worlds. It is also trivial for them to hop worlds - either wait for a flyby or put nuclear reactor on a blob of ices and drive away. They use stars as beacons and can't imagine anyone willing to live directly in the bonfire.

If they are using laser communication, our Sun will likely drown any signals in noise.

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> It is also trivial for them to hop worlds - either wait for a flyby

How so? The gravity well of a gas/ice giant would be absolutely massive. Even if you could get away from the planet, waiting for a flyby in interstellar space could well take millions of years between encounters.

"Deep within" gas giants, physics gets incredibly weird due to the pressures involved. Life arising on a moon seems more likely to me.

I was thinking more of tectonically active ice giants with large oceans under the ice shield. To explore space, you will have to drill your way out first.

I think you're thinking of ice moons, not ice giants.

It's a neat possibility for a science fiction author. I've seen the idea used a couple of times.

One of the key questions for life is where all the external energy to overcome entropy comes from. Being close to a star without being fried by it is a good way to accomplish this, but there are fewer easy energy sources on a rogue planet.

There's a couple of options; the most obvious one is radiothermal heating from radioactive elements in the core, or even just remnant heat from the core slowly working its way up. And if there are pairs of these, then their orbits might be keeping their cores moving and warm due to tides.

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