>>10826340Not actual science, but the OP is pure speculation: read the 2010 novel, OP. In it, Dave Bowman travels to Jupiter as the new lap-dog/errand boy of the monoliths, and sees these gaseous, cloud-based life forms. But their "initial conditions" for higher intelligent life aren't judged quite-right, and so the monolith-people make the moral calculus to destroy them by collapsing Jupiter into a small star-Lucifer-in order to promote intelligent life on nearby moon Europa, where more hard-bodied terrestrial/aquatic life is taking shape.
