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What does water on another have to do with life there? Yes, the form of matter self-animation and replication that evolved on earth requires water, but won't si
by davebryand 8y ago
What does water on another have to do with life there? Yes, the form of matter self-animation and replication that evolved on earth requires water, but won't similar evolution on another planet have different dependencies based on the environment of that place?
- hermitdev 8y agoWater is the one unifying factor among all currently known forms of life. Even extremophiles on Earth still require liquid water. Water is awesome in that is a universal solvent. It's plausible life could form around a different universal solvent, but to date, we don't have any evidence of it happening.
- roywiggins 8y agoLife that is recognizable to us definitely needs some sort of solvent to even begin to exist. We know water can support life. We don't know that there are any other solvents that can. We also know of a bunch of places that don't have liquid water, like the moon, that don't appear to host life. Probably there isn't life on objects that look like the moon or Mercury. Water is also really common (if not usually liquid), so you might expect that a good fraction of all the life in the universe would use water. Why worry about looking for exotic life in galactic nebulas (or whatever) when we aren't even sure how to detect it. Working out a way to detect watery life is way easier, and if there's a nearbyish exoplanet with a rocky Earthesque planet with water then we absolutely should look there first.