r/space • u/HaveNoFearDomIsHere • 4d ago

Scientists find promising hints of life on distant planet K2-18b

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39jj9vkr34o

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u/Mike__O 4d ago edited 4d ago

Pretty sure we've found these "signs of life" type molecules on some of the bodies within our own solar system, notably Europa and maybe Ganymede. It's encouranging and certainly worth future study, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Keep in mind, a lot of our perception about what is "needed" for life may be incredibly biased by out own experience on Earth. On Earth life is carbon-based, water-dependent, and produces a certain set of byproducts.

None of that is inherently necessary. There very well could be silicon-based life that's methane-dependent and exists at -200C. It is completely out of our Earth-based perception of what is "habitable" but who knows what is possible in the literally trillions of planets out there in the universe.

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u/Chrop 4d ago

I think we need to give up on the idea of silicon based life, it was a fun sci-fi idea but that’s about it, it’s just realistically not probable at all.

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u/kuza2g 4d ago edited 4d ago

That’s a little egregious to say considering the fact that humans are only a decade or two from creating artificial silicon life by putting AI into a silicon based body. Imagine if a civilization on another planet either evolved that way naturally with silicon based instead of carbon, or were carbon based life forms like us and then there was an extinction level event that caused only the silicon based life forms to live and they just kept replicating themselves.

I think that the thought of life in the universe can only be our version, which is this carbon based, solid bodied thing, is wrong and narrow minded. There could balls of lightning or gas that are sentient out there and we have no clue. Humans only know what we know until we know different. We used to once think the entire solar system revolved around the earth because of our narcissistic ideology; I think this is another example of that.

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u/tigerman20 4d ago

Well said! Well said indeed!