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While your argument is true, I would guess aliens will be quite a lot different than anything we know on this earth. Even different in so called life and death

While your argument is true, I would guess aliens will be quite a lot different than anything we know on this earth. Even different in so called life and death cycles, or even in the very definition of what we can call alive and dead. We should much broaden our search scope.

zdragnar 2y ago
Water is practically a miracle in itself. Reasonable range between freezing and boiling, simple structure, polar solvent and non-flammable. The hydrogen bonds allow lots of interesting processes, and it gets used in many many foundational biological functions as hydroxyl groups. The chemistry of such a simple molecule is difficult if not impossible to replace, and if you have it, the processes that we are familiar with are already efficient enough that there wouldn't be an advantage to not using them. Is it possibly there are configurations of life, such as not using either DNA or RNA? Sure. Is it likely that we wouldn't recognize that it is life? I doubt it very much. Aside from virii which likely devolved from living things rather than forming along side them, it's not hard to make a distinction at all.
- pockmarked19 2y ago
  It’s also magnetic, making MRIs (and floating frogs) possible.
mrangle 2y ago
Forgetting that we just leapt over the fact that the conditions of this planet are the only-evidence for the genesis of Life, and went straight to evolution, and while you logic is sound in theory, I'd again point to the probable fact that the necessary conditions for Life are massively underestimated. Perhaps mostly in terms of genesis, but also sustainability and even given theoretical evolutionary differences for hypothetical aliens. But genesis is really the only discussion that matters. Which is also very true for those that believe that there is a good possibility for alien Life. The math is beyond me to do, but I once got into a conversation with Claude that sought to find the probable distance of the nearest exoplanet that has possible Earth like conditions matching only a couple of additional factors that aren't commonly considered. Whereas I have dozens more. Claude's estimation was that the nearest such planet would be over two million light years away. Another conversation sought to understand the probability of an exact replica of this solar system somewhere else in the Universe. That probability is zero.

zdragnar 2y ago

Water is practically a miracle in itself. Reasonable range between freezing and boiling, simple structure, polar solvent and non-flammable. The hydrogen bonds allow lots of interesting processes, and it gets used in many many foundational biological functions as hydroxyl groups. The chemistry of such a simple molecule is difficult if not impossible to replace, and if you have it, the processes that we are familiar with are already efficient enough that there wouldn't be an advantage to not using them. Is it possibly there are configurations of life, such as not using either DNA or RNA? Sure. Is it likely that we wouldn't recognize that it is life? I doubt it very much. Aside from virii which likely devolved from living things rather than forming along side them, it's not hard to make a distinction at all.

pockmarked19 2y ago
It’s also magnetic, making MRIs (and floating frogs) possible.

mrangle 2y ago

Forgetting that we just leapt over the fact that the conditions of this planet are the only-evidence for the genesis of Life, and went straight to evolution, and while you logic is sound in theory, I'd again point to the probable fact that the necessary conditions for Life are massively underestimated. Perhaps mostly in terms of genesis, but also sustainability and even given theoretical evolutionary differences for hypothetical aliens. But genesis is really the only discussion that matters. Which is also very true for those that believe that there is a good possibility for alien Life. The math is beyond me to do, but I once got into a conversation with Claude that sought to find the probable distance of the nearest exoplanet that has possible Earth like conditions matching only a couple of additional factors that aren't commonly considered. Whereas I have dozens more. Claude's estimation was that the nearest such planet would be over two million light years away. Another conversation sought to understand the probability of an exact replica of this solar system somewhere else in the Universe. That probability is zero.