Such as Mars, we are looking for life on the premise that it must have water to survive. We have seen life - extremophiles - in the most unlikely places on Earth living without the common comforts. I understand that we have yet to find life that survives without water, but why should we limit ourselves, if money and the ability to travel around our universe was not a factor?
Chart of Extemeophiles:
http://www.resa.net/nasa/extreme_chart.htm
2007-08-09 17:18:06 · 11 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
Water is the basis of life as we know it and so we think it should be the most common. Also on nearby planets water is appearing to be abundant so they are searching for water bsed life 1st.
It can also be based on other chemicals like ammmonia, such as when Carl Sagan proposed inn the 70s that Jupiter might have ammonia life.
2007-08-09 17:21:38 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
I suppose you are absolutely right, but as you say.....we are basing our search on what we know. So far life has only existed with the presense of water. We learn new things all time though. It was previously thought that life could not exist on the sea floor thousands of feet down where no light could reach. Yet life was discovered there. The same assumptions were made for climates that were too cold, hot, salty, etc. Life seem to find a way though. The search continues :o)
2007-08-10 00:40:03 · answer #2 · answered by Ordin 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Most of life on earth is some form of water. We have underground water that feeds the desert plants. To find some bit of water or see if Mars is really ice under the dust/rock ground is a great find. As well as how the planet was made ours is not to hard to see how it was made but lots and lots of men in the past have been called crazy for doing, saying, and exploring ways to prove to the rest of the world how life was made. SO in a way all you really have to do is look at life on earth not just how it was made but how it was discovered and you have your answer.
2007-08-10 00:31:08 · answer #3 · answered by Arizona Chick 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Forget the rest... here is THE reason.
Looking for life that thrives in water is a way for us to recognize what we are looking for.
No-one is saying that other kinds of life cannot exist, but we may not recognize them as life even if we found them. Looking for the essential compounds of life "as we know it" assures us that we will spend our time searching for something we know we can find.
If there are other kinds of life so different from Earth life and we don't know what these differences are during the search, our search criteria approaches infinity. We could search the same ground forever without being able to exclude it from our search (deem it searched).
If it makes you feel any better, we are also independently searching for intelligence, in the form of radio transmissions. This search is of course not water specific and excludes life forms on technological achievement basis, not upon the chemistry of the organism located.
Cheers!
2007-08-10 00:35:13 · answer #4 · answered by erikfaraway 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Water... even carbon may not be necessary for life to form. Nature is extremely adaptive... especially with lower lifeforms with short lifespans.
I knew a guy who got his Ph.D. by accident. He was supposed to measure the oxygen intake and carbon dioxide produced by a bacteria culture. He forgot to look in on it over a 3-day week end and when he finally measured, the gas proportions were anomalous. Over the weekend, the critters had mutated so they could live on the carbon dioxide. Rather than killing off the culture, he'd accidentally caused the creation of another critter. He got his Ph.D. and became the resident expert in the new critter... all because he forgot to look in on the experiment when he was supposed to.
The point is, all our theories about the requirements for life to form are just that. They're based on our narrow view of life. If life is to form, it'll form. And it's kind of tough to stop it. A spray may just about obliterate a population of a kind of bug, but the offspring of the few survivors are immune to the spray. Same is true for some plants. We use the same principle of evolution in immunization of our own bodies. We give ourselves a slight case of some disease and the body adapts to fight the disease on a much larger scale.
2007-08-10 00:50:56 · answer #5 · answered by gugliamo00 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
because nwater is like the greatest thing ever. the whole deal with hydrotgen bonds allows it to travel easily to organisms, it helps break stuff down, it keeps transitioning temperatures stable, ice is a great insulator, it can easily recycle itself... the list goes on and on. water is just the perfect thing for everything. ammonia sucks because its not as stable as water.
2007-08-10 00:27:16 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Perhaps it is not that WATER is the basis of life, but rather that CARBON-BASED life is the only life that exists. Silicon or germanium just don't have the versitility of carbon in forming compounds.
2007-08-10 00:23:03 · answer #7 · answered by cattbarf 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
yeah. you are right. how can we be sure that the extraterrasional intelligences have had the same steps of evolution with us? i mean they don't have to have endoderm, ectoderm and mesoderm. they even don'T have to have a basic of cells. they don't have to have systems of body....
BUT we don't have any other definitions of "life". the only "life" as we know probably have started with WATER. That may be the reason that they are looking for water to Search for Extraterrasional Intelligence. :)
2007-08-10 03:15:22 · answer #8 · answered by Denizthenerd 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
You just need something to carry sustenance and energy. The Enterprise, (Star Trek,) found huge forms of life living in the vacuum of space. Who knows what could be found out there.
2007-08-10 00:24:40 · answer #9 · answered by Mr. Bodhisattva 6 · 1⤊ 3⤋
u know, i've wondered about that a lot to...
i guess it's because that's the only way we know that life could exist....
2007-08-10 00:47:02 · answer #10 · answered by Manisha 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋