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
We dont know for certain that no live can exist without water but first of all, all life that we do not exists needs water to exist so its a pretty good starting point. And second of all life is when you get to the real basics chemistry. And for chemistry to happen you need a fluid medium otherwise the ingredients needed for life can be there but wont build life because they wont interact. And water has some pretty awsome propeties that makes a lot of chemistry possible. This isnt the case for most other fluids. So we search for water not because we know for certain that its the only possiblity but because its the most likely.
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