Oceans Potentially More Common In Solar System

nairolF writes "The AIP Physics News Update has a brief note on how water oceans might be more common in the solar system than previously thought, rendering useless the old notion of a narrow "habitable zone" in solar systems, outside of which life cannot exist."

Comments

This makes inhabiting other planets easier

[Hairy_Potter]

Knowing that there's a large and ready source of water, which conveniently can be broken down into oxygen and hydrogen, once we get a decent portable power supply (fusion maybe?).

This may make the Jovian and Saturnian satellites the prime real estate (aside from Earth) in the Solar System (whoa, echoes of Larry Nivem) Who needs the dry, dusty Moon or Mars.

Of course, all bets are off if life is discovered on Titan or Ganymede. Greenpeace would probably start a petition to leave the environment alone, so the single celled organisms can prosper while humanity suffers on an increasingly overpopulated Earth. Then again, if it's the Chinese that get their first, well, we know how what they did to the Three Rivers Gorge, goodbye extraterrestial life, hello New Gangzhou!

Oh, man...

[Schwamm]

I don't like the attitude of "Well, if there's water, there can be life!" That implies that people think that without water, there is no life.

Just because the life forms we know about need water to live doesn't mean that any life that may or may not be in the rest of the universe needs water.

I mean, really, can we assume that all life in the universe is carbon-based and needs water to live? I don't think so. It's entirely likely that if we were to discover life, we wouldn't actually recognize it as such.

Just my random thoughts.

Another.."Life based on what we know" article.

[TeleoMan]

People, people, people: based on what we know about life what you say is fairly true. However, it is what we don't know about how life is formed and in what forms it may take that will be clincher in discovering life other than our own. We know that for life to exist in a form that we know it, we need conditions that are similar to what we find on earth. However, there is no evidence to support a conclusive claim that life cannot exist in environments that are dissimilar from where we exist. Life may very well exist on mars, but it may be in a form we have yet to discover. Scientist are always looking for water as signs to point to the possibility for life elsewhere. Maybe there is another ideal chemical combination that may also harvest life.


"I can't argue that I'm not an idiot." - Jon Katz