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
Any kind of biological live is based on carbon, there are a lot of studies, great thoughts about that. Even the next possibly chain builder the silicon is not able to build stable long molecule chains. So the possibility that (higher) live elsewhere runs on or at least started with carbon is very valid.
Why now water? Because other natural “solvers” would harm the long carbon chains and so kill live.
I’m pretty sure live could be very different especially highly developed ones that may even leave the barriers of biology. But the start of life will always be biological and that will be carbon based.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-based_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-based_life)
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