Have we been looking for aliens in the wrong place?

Researchers looking for life on distant worlds focus on the presence of water New research shows this may be a misguided way to look for habitable planets Scientists said nutrients like phosphorous are also key to the presence of life Models showed that the subsurface oceans of important targets in our search for alien life likely don’t have these core elements

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Tau.Neutrino said:

Have we been looking for aliens in the wrong place?

Researchers looking for life on distant worlds focus on the presence of water New research shows this may be a misguided way to look for habitable planets Scientists said nutrients like phosphorous are also key to the presence of life Models showed that the subsurface oceans of important targets in our search for alien life likely don’t have these core elements

more…

H2O is everywhere.
CO2 and CH4 and N2 and NH4 are everywhere.
O2 is the atmosphere on some moons.

You’ve got to look further than that for evidence of life.

Phosphorus is an essential part of DNA, but is it an essential part of carbon-based life?

When I was young and read space stuff the consensus seemed to be that life was rare because it depended on water and water was rare. Now it seems water is everywhere in space.

AwesomeO said:

When I was young and read space stuff the consensus seemed to be that life was rare because it depended on water and water was rare. Now it seems water is everywhere in space.

Not quite. When I was growing up it was carbon that everyone was looking for.

Then it was found that everywhere on Earth (and under Earth) that has liquid water has life.

At that stage it was said that intelligent life is rare because surface liquid water that is not bound to hydrated minerals is rare. That’s where Goldilocks zone comes from. On the presumption that only surface living organisms would be astronomers.

It’s still rare. But ice is as common as dirt and so are hydrated minerals.

Subsurface liquid water is more common in the moons of Jupiter than it is on Earth. Even Pluto has an amount of subsurface liquid water within a factor of 2 of Earth’s oceans.

> Phosphorus is an essential part of DNA, but is it an essential part of carbon-based life?

I should have added. DNA is absolutely and definitely not a prerequisite for carbon-based life.

Chemicals similar to ATP may be a prerequisite.

But remember that arsenic can substitute for phosphorus. It’s directly under it in the periodic table. The arsenate ion AsO4 can substitute for the phosphate ion PO4.

Phosphorus tends to be more common than arsenic, which is why it is used on Earth.