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Water Not a Good Enough Guide To Find Alien Life
An anonymous reader noted an article in Cosmos that questions the conventional wisdom of the "follow the water" strategy of seeking extraterrestrial life, saying "There's an awful lot of places where water could exist — either on the surface of the Earth, or deep within it — yet life is largely concentrated in a small sliver of this."
It seems to me that "follow the water" is better than seeking randomly -- if you find no water, then there can't be any life (as we know it) anyway.
Sure, if you find water, it's not a guarantee that there *is* life -- but it seems like a good way to weed out "definitely no" prospects.
Esli epei etot cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.
You know, the earth has bacteria and fungi floating around high in the atmosphere and deep undersea -- probably even under the deep ocean, though we haven't looked there yet.
Tiny sliver... HA!
-l
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ever bother to read them? I haven't had an article accepted in over 10 years and I suspect it's because I read the link I am referring to and write an appropriate headline.
It simple states that water can exists in environments that is hostile to life as we know it.
No shit, Sherlock.
I do take issue with the idea that only 12% of the water on earth has life. AFAIK, a cup of water from any natural source in or in the ground has some sort of life in it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't caim having read every single one, but I think this is the dumbest news item in Slashdot in months.
Maybe intelligence is just concentrated in a small sliver of it!
Thats very possibly true (thus the appended "as we know it".) Unfortunately saying "Here are all the reasons you might be wrong" is a lot easier than determining new approaches and going out and looking, and you've got to start somewhere.
So until new evidence points us in another direction, "follow the water" is the best direction we have.
and how much of the oceans are devoid of life?
The black, oily, part.
If life is just an evolved entity composed of randomly assembled machines, as some biologists claim, then it begs the question of wether or not there might be 'life' out there that is not water based, but based on say, sand -- or silicon.
That is not what "begs the question" means.
http://begthequestion.info/
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I just want to reiterate what the parent said, as I'm becoming frustrated with all of the "why do we assume it can't exist if it is not like us" posts.
No one is claiming life cannot exist without water, we are only stating that life as we know it cannot. Since we have no idea what the hell we would be looking for otherwise, and since we have limited (and in the search for ET life, extremely limited) we have to determine some heuristic for our search. Since water is A) easily detected with telescopes, and B) a requirement for life as we are aware, it is so far our best means of refining our search. There may be some amazing form of X based or X requiring life out there, but since we do not know X, it is not at all helpful to acknowledge its possible existence. If, on the other hand, we happen upon X based/requiring life, we can then include X in our parameters.
Please stop assuming that this is some circa 1900AD Newtonian Physics style oversight.