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I'm not sure that's fair. Researchers would be absolutely captivated to discover life forms that were drastically different from anything we've encountered. At

I'm not sure that's fair. Researchers would be absolutely captivated to discover life forms that were drastically different from anything we've encountered. At the moment though, there's no clear understanding of how such life might form or what it could look like – and there are reasons to think that new life forms might be quite similar to known life forms. After all, we know at a high level what makes matter-based-carbon-water-life-forms work! It's a bit silly to try looking for something when we don't know what it looks like. Instead we can say with reasonable certainty that "life can evolve in this way, and we have evidence" – and look for life like that.

gonvaled 10y ago
My point is that there are vastly more environments different than Earth, than similar ones. And that while having proof that water based life forms are possible, we do not yet know how common they are. Maybe water is, considered in astronomical terms, an hostile substrate for life.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  It's really all just guessing, with only one data point. It may be that you're right, and alien life is all incomprehensibly weird in different ways. Or it may be turn out that only semi-Earth-like conditions can produce life, and it all looks rather familiar. Or it may be somewhere in between. I hope I live long enough to find out.