Recent comments in /f/space

verstohlen t1_j864gal wrote

It can, and perhaps will, or has. Life can sometimes spontaneously come into being out of a variety of non-living inorganic materials, such as water and other chemicals on the periodic chart, mixed at just the right temperature and ratios, with some electrical charges to jump start the reaction. It's pretty amazing when it happens and the examples I've seen are rather astounding and hard to believe. And the experiments conducted have proved how amazing this phenomenon is.

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nyg8 t1_j863ek4 wrote

Your premise is false. Scientists don't only look at life similar to earth. However, they put most of the focus on that. They do it for a few very good reasons, for one, they know earth like conditions can produce life, therefore if they find earth like conditions they will likely find life. Secondly, given that we have a good example of life here, we know what to look for. What do you think would be the characteristics of silicone based life for example? Because we dont either, hence, harder to look for

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tylerm11_ t1_j86362n wrote

Why should we not look on the surface of the sun for life? We know for 100% certainty that life CAN exist in the habitable zone. That’s it, that’s all we know. We don’t know if there is other forms of life, but it would make astronomically more sense to look for what we know CAN exist than taking stabs in the dark at what MIGHT exist.

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FargoFinch t1_j8622eb wrote

At least for life as we know it it's very unlikely such can arise in methane seas. The cellular membrane is dependent on the interaction between water and lipids (fat) to even exist. If I remember my chemistry correctly methane does not have the "magnetic" property that water molecules have, which is super important for the chemistry of Earth life.

Water is weird chemistry-wise, and that's why there is so much focus on finding liquid water when it comes to xenobiology. If there actually is life on Titan, its chemistry must have to be radically different than our own, something we can't really envision.

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kevin1d t1_j861txq wrote

Well, it does make sense to look at a "habitable zone." Maybe not habitable for other life forms, but for Earthlings, it is.

And that's the thing. The only life we know is from Earth. So, most people will research planets that look like ours because we certainly know h20-like planets could harbor life.

And there'll probably be someone out there who is looking at the other planets for life forms, but not much.

Why don't we mainly look at the moon for life forms? Because we don't have any life forms made from rocks here on Earth. So it doesn't make much sense to extensively look for it there.

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Shrike99 t1_j860j84 wrote

S-IC nominal burn time is 150 seconds, or exactly 2.5 minutes.

Superheavy nominal burn time is 169 seconds, or 2.8 minutes.

Though that figure may have been for the 29 engine version, the 33 engine version might be a bit less since it burns fuel quicker.

Either way, it's close enough to the Saturn V that I think it's fair to call it a 'similar' duration.

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DrestinBlack t1_j86000m wrote

We have a sample size of 1. All we know about how life is created and evolves comes from our one single experience. So the most logical thing to look for would be similar circumstances. We have no data to support the idea that life could form under any other condition so why look for the unknown?

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PhilGibbs7777 t1_j85zi5n wrote

My best guess is that life is quite common in the universe, it is usually based on similar biochemistry to life on Earth, but it is only rarely as advanced. However, I could be wrong on any of these points.

In particular, we don't know what it takes to get life started. It might be that the watery habitats like those on Titan often have primitive single cell life. The conditions needed to evolve to higher lifeforms are only slightly better known, but it took a long time to get started.

So life on Titan is certainly possible. It may be simple, but perhaps we will be surprised when we finally get some probes into its deep oceans.

Whether life is always similar to Earth life and requires Earth-like conditions, or can appear in different forms almost anywhere, is a huge unknown. I think exobiologistes are more open minded about this than you give them credit for, but there is good reason to think that very hot or very cold environments will be less promising, especially for more advanced lifeforms that we have a chance of detecting.

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Its_Just_A_Typo t1_j85yyjx wrote

Interesting that you use crabs here, and I think crab-like creatures are likely in any life-producing world with actual fauna we may someday find, being that they evolved independently at least three different times here on earth. Seems to be a particularly efficient form that life keeps finding.

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RollinThundaga t1_j85xoxl wrote

🤷‍♂️ nobody said it can't happen, we just have exactly zero evidence so far.

A solid chunk of the mars missions are dedicated to determining if life does/once could have inhabited the planet.

Unfortunately our sample size for life is one, so we look for eathlike planets in other star systems becauae that's the only type of place we DO know that life can occur.

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FleetingSentience t1_j85xghe wrote

> That’s why it always annoys me when “scientists” always want to find a planet in a “habitable zone” to search for life, but that doesn’t make any sense,

Imagine no-one had ever seen crabs before, then imagine we went to the beach and discovered crabs. Then one of us says, "I wonder if crabs exist anywhere else on the planet?"

Where would you look first?

Do you check the centre of an active volcano on the off chance that some crabs have properties that allows them to live in lava, despite the fact we have no idea what properties they would need or whether it's possible for those properties to exist?

Would you look in clouds in case gas crabs exist in clouds. Again no idea what a cloud crab would look like, if it even looked like anything and no idea how we would detect such a thing is even there. Solid demonstration of thinking outside the box though.

Or... do you go to another beach and look there?

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