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Once we move outside Earth-like conditions, we should be decreasingly confident about our speculations, not more confident. What are the chemical and physical c
by rendall 5y ago
Once we move outside Earth-like conditions, we should be decreasingly confident about our speculations, not more confident. What are the chemical and physical conditions of a hydrocarbon lake at 5g, -180C, 1 kilotesla and 100 atmospheres? Can we really be confident that "whale" is the best mechanical solution for moving around there? Can we really be confident that "moving around" would even be the best survival strategy? I think not.
- alkonaut 5y agoIndeed earth evolutionary processes require earth like conditions. But here I mentioned swim in water which is a pretty strict constraint on temp vs pressure. That said even in any other fluid I doubt we’ll ever look at an organism and say “it swims like …<blank>“ because there wasn’t an earth organism that swims anything like it. Of course that means comparing to every method of swimming locomotion on earth which is a staggering diversity from the microscopic up to whales. Unless other forces are involved (e.g electromagnetism isn’t used for locomotion on earth to my knowledge) and the fluid is incompressible like water, then I’m (armchair) guessing “to swim” doesn’t have that many evolvable solutions, regardless of pressure/temperature and the specific chemistry.