What dictates that extra terrestrial life requires water in the same way as we do? Even on earth we have fish who can’t live in the open air, and people who can’t live underwater.
What is to say that ET can’t eat space rocks to obtain all of its nutrients, or even more, what is to say that they require nutrients at all?
Edit: Thanks for all the wonderful answers. Makes perfect sense. They aren’t so much saying we HAVE to have water to create life, more that we only know how that works and looking for the unknown in the vast expanse that is the universe would be the worlds largest needle in a haystack game.
In: Planetary Science
They key point is that water is essential for “life as we know it”, so we’d look for it when looking for life.
It may not be necessary for a hypothetical “life as we don’t know it” but we aren’t looking for that, because we don’t know what it looks like.
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