Why are the conditions for alien life to evolve the same as ours? Why can’t they evolve without water, or extremely far from their sun? Is there a reason for this or is it just because our only example is ourselves?

Question

Idk if to put biology or planetary science so ye.

In: Biology

Answer 1

I would like to note something others missed.

Our definition of life isn’t really that well defined. Like humans are considered life. So are bacteria. But your average person considers something living so long it has consciousness. A biologist might tell you that life needs to be able to reproduce its cells on its own. By this definition viruses aren’t really life. But someone might consider viruses as living organisms.

I really like fantasy novels. I read mostly the high-level fantasy ones. High-level fantasy would be something like I solo leveling, Starcraft, etc. These novels definitely can give some inspiration about possible ways life can exist. Think of the Swarm from Starcraft. Although each zerg can be considered a living organism there is a special situation. The Swarm itself is a living organism with subconscious consciousness. So we have a living “organism” that exists in the form of pan-consciousness.

We also can’t really explore or define well enough consciousness. Like what are the criteria to distinguish between something being conscious or not? I should note that research projects like neuralink might allow us to have a new look at consciousness and our subjective Ego/Will.

So defining life a bit better as well as consciousness is really important.