Alien Life Could Look Nothing Like What We Expect. Here's How Microbes Beyond Earth Might Live Without Liquid Water

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• tristynalxander@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I admit that the ionic liquids are an interesting concept for strange life. That said, most the ones they have look far too complex to have formed by any natural process in any meaningful amount, and anything that could form naturally doesn’t seem likely to have good a temperature range for compatible polymers. Maybe there’s something weird I’m missing (something that increases the NH3 liquid range and doesn’t react with siloconates or something crazy like that), but I’d be extremely skeptical of life without water.

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  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    One of the things I will never forgive Chemistry for is how it didn’t introduce Acid and Bases from the perspective of a continuum of modifications on Water molecules that can accentuate into an “imbalance”.

    It makes it all so less arbitrary from that perspective, but Chemistry is atrocious with the big idea stuff lol.

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    • Gsus4@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      But isnt that what the pH level measures: the -log(concentration of H3O+)?

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• TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Expecting alien life to look any certain way at all is already a logical flaw. At best we could speculate on likely chemistries and even that would be little more than guesswork

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  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Yes, water is a stunning force of nature though, I would not be surprised if alien life didn’t depend on it but I also would not be surprised at all if it did to some degree.

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    • TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Exactly. Gun to my head id say there’s a 99.999% if we ever discover life outside of earth it will be carbon based life requiring liquid water. But who the fuck knows really

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