Simulation Pinpoints the Most Likely Spots For Life In the Milky Way (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Our home galaxy isn't as hospitable to life as you might think. Cosmic radiation, supernova explosions, and collisions with small galaxies make much of the Milky Way too hellish for biology. But a detailed new simulation locates quiet and fertile cosmic neighborhoods, including a surprising locale: wispy streams of stars flung far beyond the main body of the Milky Way.

Comments

Re:Lots of assumptions

[delt0r]

Well really bad scifi aside (Dr Who, star trek). A proper look at elemental abundance and chemical properties, something that we do know with a lot of accuracy, non carbon based life forms are a pipe dream. The only proposed element is silicon, and it is shit. Total shit. It simply does not form the range of compounds you need. Does not have any kind of useful solvent. doesn't naturally form anything interesting even in the slightest. And where you have silcon you have carbon. In fact silicon is far more prevalent on earth than carbon, yet life only uses it for shells of some diatoms.

Compare to carbon, where we have giant clouds of interesting organic molecules just floating around in space, that can bond to itself and other elements in an infinite range of ways with and equally diverse range of properties. Water is a *very* good and strong solvent and highly polar. But in a pinch i guess say methane may work as a solvent. But it wouldn't be as good as water.

In short there are very good reasons to believe all life in this universe will be carbon based. But lets not forget, that gives a huge scope for varation from what we see here on earth. With equal certainty all alien life will not be biocompatible with us. If we found anything with DNA, RNA etc, it would be very strong grounds to suspect common origin.

Some people i work with here, are astrobiologist. Honestly carbon is as impressive as a bable fish.

Re:Lots of assumptions

[delt0r]

So a solvent is important for moving things around. Mobility of compounds in other words. It turns out that some form of general mobility is always required, otherwise it would just sit there doing nothing. Without mobility nothing can spontaneously from. Water is again much like carbon, especially unique. However it is true that other solvents are possible. The most likely being liquid methane, because it can plausibly exist.

It should also be noted that *no one* has came even close to the most basic set of metabolism for anything other than carbon based life, in a water based solvent.