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."

Re:Oh, man...

[Henry V .009]

Do you have a better indicator for life than water? What chemical should we be looking for? Researchers don't believe that water is absolutely necessary for life. But is sure has facilitated our kind of life, and that is the only kind of life we know. So where should we start looking for extraterrestial life? In places with lots of silicon? Not likely. Where there is water seems to be a good place to start. And that thing about discovering life and probably not recognizing it is bunk. The chances are actually very slim that we could'nt recognize it. Sure, we might think it's some sort of funny chemical reaction that needs investigation at first. But as soon as we know that there is reproduction with information being passed on, we know that it is life.

Scientific Absolutes

[ddillman]

This article is basically countering an old axiom, that water, and therefore life (as we know it) are rare and exist in only certain conditions.

Scientists (and probably the media covering them) have had a habit of making such absolute statements as these for centuries. Recall the common theories of the universe around the time of Gallileo and Copernicus?

Isn't it about time scientists and those who report their findings wake up to the fact that what we know today is only what we know today, and that things might be diferent tomorrow? Report the findings, sure, but make sure your language shows that we are still looking for more information, still finding new things every day...

Re:Oh, man...

[josh crawley]

You all question water to survive. Since I want to further my understanding, what sort of liquid do you think can replace H2O ? I do see a few things that water can do/properties it has.

1: H2O is quite light. It's only 18g/mol. There's no other combination _I_ can think of that would be as light, as we humans are made up of a lot of water.

2: H2O is slightly polar, so it 'sticks' to certain structures a little more. Oil would be an interesting substitute to water, but oil is large polimer chains. Too hard to create. However Ions would disrupt other chemicals. Also, Ions require water to have charge.

3: Most of all biological elements are within the top 10 elements on the peridic chart. The reason these are used is because nuclear fusion within the sun allows these to be made with much greater abundance. This reason also coves why no Earthen creatures use silicon instead of carbon.

4: If you can accept the above examples of why water is better than other mostly inert transfer chemicals, then tempature also comes into play. I know of no animals that use solid or gaseous blood. All use liquid of some type, just because diffusion (or in water, osmosis) is easier to transport chemicals. The tempature of water being a liquid is between 255K and 310K , so most planets are eliminated just because of the tempature needs strict control.

A simple question about life in general: What grows faster, plants in the rainfores or plants on Antartica?

Re:Oh, man...

[Bearpaw]

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.

The statements is not incorrect. The implication you take from it is incorrect. "If A then B" does not logically imply "If not-A then not-B".

(Though it is a fairly common mistake, so it could be argued that science writers might want to take it into account when they write their articles.)

Re:Non-H20 life.

[telbij]

Which begs the question. What is intelligence, and would we recognize an intellect based on completely different life experience from our own?

Hell, if consciousness is just a byproduct of a complex system, we would never know it because there would be no way to relate to such a system. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there is some kind of life sharing the same planet with us that we never noticed because it functions on a completely different level.

Can you prove this?

[SONET]

...outside of which life cannot exist.

should read "...outside of which life as we know it cannot exist."

It really bothers me when people leave that part out. Though we haven't found any evidence yet, living organisms in other solar systems may very well have adapted to a completely different kind of environment than we have here on Earth. Just because we don't know about it or understand it yet doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't exist. :)

--SONET

BTW

[Motheius]

That range is called the Goldie Locks range. Not too hot, not too cold....

Liquid water needed, plus

[JJ]

Organic chemistry as we know it, that is simple acid molecules grouping into proteins and with carbohydrates, requires not just water and quite a lot of it. Although ammonia will also provide a media for these chemical structures, there are other requirements which may limit the ability of all but a small number of oceans from supporting life. Note that the three extreme conditions on Earth normally considered (dry cold of Antarctica, near freezing and crushing pressures of ocean depths and undersea vents) all did not develop their own life, but provided suitable environments for existing life to adapt to. Could any other planetoid in the solar system support life? Possibly. Develop it independently? Very, very much less likely.

Re:This makes inhabiting other planets easier

[Mr. Slippery]

According to you we would have had no need to colonize beyond the first cradel of humanity to serve the burgeoning need for resources to house, feed, and ensure the survival of our kind.

The fact that space colonizatoin cannot relieve population pressures does not imply that space colonization is not a good idea for other reasons. There are resources to be harvested, knowledge to be gained, and (as you point out) having humans on more than one rock increases the species chance of survival.

But it's still the case that the planet's population is increaseing by several people each second; just to keep up with the growth, every three days you'd have to build a new space-city the size of San Francisco and transport enough people to fill it [overpopulation.org].

Life on Venus?

[csmiller]

Could someone explain why life is impossible on Venus. I know that it is 400C with suphuric acid/carbon dioxide atmosphere, which will stop any life from starting now.
But this would of gradulary developed, Venus started in similar condtion to Earth, therefore any life that managed to get a toe-hold on Venus would have had time to adapt their bio-chemistry in a similar way to those of the Earth's sub-sea vent creatures (~150C, high sulphuric acid concentrations).
I have heard that 'Oxygen destroys naked DNA'. Therefore there can be no DNA-based life on Sol 3, but when we look at Sol 3, we are hard-pushed to find somewhere where there isn't life of some sort.