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
Life, in every form we’ve ever understood it to be, is a series of chemical reactions. Water is a solvent the allows those chemical reactions to happen. Without water, the range of things that can happen is far, far more limited, and the opportunity for life to arise is much more difficult. It’s like trying to build a lego death star with rocks instead of actual lego. Could you do? Maybe? Kind of? But it can’t be very much. Same reason we look for carbon based life. Carbon can bond with so many different things that it gives life what it needs – flexibility and opportunity
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