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Likewise, if/when we find life, how would we recognize it? We have some understood rule sets for life here, yet we have life forms that don't 100% conform to an
by ksaj 4y ago
Likewise, if/when we find life, how would we recognize it? We have some understood rule sets for life here, yet we have life forms that don't 100% conform to any one of them.
There is no guarantee life on another planet will even have the same DNA structure we have, let alone adhere to the model we've come to agree on for Earthen life. We only have LUCA to understand our own life forms, and zero idea what became and begat LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). The word "Common" is important there, because we know there was a lot of life before LUCA.
I took an Origins of Life course that really opened my eyes about how complicated things get when looking for life at different scales.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoIt would be astounding if alien life had terrestrial DNA. A lot of scifi movies get this hopelessly wrong. It's reasonable to expect some kind of DNA-analog: a system, not necessarily using familiar amino acids, that does a similar job. We live in a relatively cold and squishy regime. I suspect the range of possible DNA-analogs is much wider than we think it is. Many will exist in not-at-all-Earth-like conditions.