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Life on earth is so specifically bound to Earth's conditions, I don't understand how anybody could really say this. I've no doubt there's things like life in o

Life on earth is so specifically bound to Earth's conditions, I don't understand how anybody could really say this. I've no doubt there's things like life in other places. I have no reason to assume they'll be that strictly similar what we call life here, and we may not even recognize them as such. To imagine they are similar to earth-life to me seems more anthropo/geocentric. Arguably our obsession with looking for stuff similar to us is perhaps blinding us to the true diversity in the cosmos.

svachalek 3y ago
Multi-cellular life, sure. But single cell life is hardier and could survive lots of places. And we're blind to the cosmos, period. All we can see is star-sized objects and bigger. No one is ruling out other possibilities, they're just thinking about where we can look first, when we start looking.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  Multicellular life in the oceans would be bound more to the conditions of an ocean than of the non-marine Earth. And while there's some diversity in oceans, much of this diversity would be captured in any given ocean. Multicellular life tried a whole bunch of shapes and niches early on. It would be interesting if some of the also-rans in Earth's oceans became the winners in other oceans.
WalterBright 3y ago
Live has persisted on Earth through several large changes in temperature and the gas composition of the atmosphere - many of those changes caused by life itself.
HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
I'd expect life elsewhere to be much like ours in general, especially when you consider the full range of life both present and past on earth. The course of evolution is necessarily going to be similar anywhere - bound by the rules of chemistry, going from simple to complex forms, single cellular to multicellular, a full range of sensory modalities developing, predator/prey species evolving under similar high level dynamics, etc, etc. These types of generality have nothing to do specifically with life on earth. Of course the details will vary, but I'd expect alien animals to be recognizably animals, even if they include some novel aspects specific to their own environments.

svachalek 3y ago

Multi-cellular life, sure. But single cell life is hardier and could survive lots of places. And we're blind to the cosmos, period. All we can see is star-sized objects and bigger. No one is ruling out other possibilities, they're just thinking about where we can look first, when we start looking.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
Multicellular life in the oceans would be bound more to the conditions of an ocean than of the non-marine Earth. And while there's some diversity in oceans, much of this diversity would be captured in any given ocean. Multicellular life tried a whole bunch of shapes and niches early on. It would be interesting if some of the also-rans in Earth's oceans became the winners in other oceans.

WalterBright 3y ago

Live has persisted on Earth through several large changes in temperature and the gas composition of the atmosphere - many of those changes caused by life itself.

HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago

I'd expect life elsewhere to be much like ours in general, especially when you consider the full range of life both present and past on earth. The course of evolution is necessarily going to be similar anywhere - bound by the rules of chemistry, going from simple to complex forms, single cellular to multicellular, a full range of sensory modalities developing, predator/prey species evolving under similar high level dynamics, etc, etc. These types of generality have nothing to do specifically with life on earth. Of course the details will vary, but I'd expect alien animals to be recognizably animals, even if they include some novel aspects specific to their own environments.