Wonders of the Solar System; Aristotle's Lagoon

[pling]

We watched the last episode of Wonders of the Solar System last night - about the possibilities of alien life. I think I maybe noticed the simplifications in this one more, as it's closer to my field. Although it's also possible that I know just enough to miss the point ;) I think my two main quibbles were about the assumption that water is

Comments

[ylla]

Hmmm. You are a Real Scientist and presumably know more about this than me, but I thought the point was that life based on water is the only thing we know how to look for. We can find planets with H2O, and suitable conditions for liquid water, and we can look for things that are by-products of life as we know it, and various other things - it's not that there couldn't be other kinds of life, but if you don't know what they are, where do you start looking?

[pling]

Oh, that's a good point. I'd not thought of it quite like that - I was more thinking that it was possibly unnecessarily restricting the search (particularly since my gut feeling is that it won't be the same), but yes it's hard to detect stuff you don't know how it works.

(And being a Real Scientist isn't relevant outside of the very specific things I've worked on which this is not one of, and now I've not done so for 5 years it probably doesn't count for them either ;) )