I wonder what assumptions are baked into our search for extraterrestrial life. Would we recognize a life-form that is gaseous? One that is planet-sized? One that communicates so slowly that it takes a thousand years to make a single sentence?
In Greg Egan's diaspora, they touch on things like this.
I can't remember specifically but at one point they encounter a planet where there is some process that is turning complete, and they realize an entire universe is simulated in the process with sentient beings that they can never communicate with.
I can't remember the details so I'm butchering it a little, but it's a great read.
Diaspora and Permutation City also touch on the topic of speeding up or slowing down conscious so that millenia pass in subjective seconds, or a subjective second passes in a millisecond, etc.
Under specific conditions, such a planet may even retain an atmosphere, have moderate surface temperatures (and thus, perhaps even liquid water), and life could exist on it if chemically-powered rather than using photosynthesis.
Such a planet would be an excellent vehicle to carry life from one star system to another. And another plus: out of a star system's influence sphere (while free-wandering through space), it could have very stable conditions over long periods of time. Which doesn't hurt in the formation or evolution of life.
True, there's a lot of (big) if's there. But the universe is biiiiiigggg so I wouldn't rule it out.
Also, in regards to life using electrical signals to process information, gaseous clouds would have to generate signals with lower entropy than white noise from exploding stars.
