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Extraterrestrial Water
RumorControl wrote in with the news about the first known capture of water that was extra-terrestrial in origin on earth. It was recovered from a meteorite that hit the Earth last year. Interesting implications for the amount of water to be found on asteriods and their ilk.
Just because most forms of life that we know of require water, it doesn't mean that ALL forms of life do. Keep in mind that life on this planet most likely didn't evolve because of water, but because of water it evolved to use it. It's the same thing with oxygen. Pretty much every living thing on this plannet requires oxygen to exist, but in the early days of earth there was no oxygen, it wasn't until plants came around that oxygen started existing (at least in present day quantities). Oxygen managed to kill off a good deal of the life at the time because, to them, it was highly toxic. Life then evolved to use oxygen in order to stick around. When you think about it, water seems like it would be very unlikely to be usable by anyform of life, as it has some nasty corrosive properties. Because of the way the atoms are located, H on top w/ two Os hanging off of it, it ends up somewhat like a magnet, positive at one end, negative at the other. Because of this water is very good at breaking apart chemical bonds. That's why so many things disolve into water, it rips them apart into individual molecules.
Also, how do we know that we aren't surrounded by alien life forms right now, that exist in a state undetectable by us. They might not know we exist either. People always assume all life is somewhat earthlike in nature, which is probally not in the slightest bit true. Life evolving completely separate from earth would probally evolve along a very different path.
(btw, take all the chemistry here w/ a grain of blue radioactive space salt, it's been a while since I took chem, IOW i'm probally talking out of my ass)
-matt