I believe everyone knows that astronomers must first look for liquid water when searching for alien life. So many people think that astronomers’ brains are too rigid, so why can’t they break the traditional way of thinking? There may be completely different ways of life in the universe.
Is astronomers’ thinking rigid?
of course not. Their way of thinking is very divergent and very smart. How could they not think of such a simple question?
But why do astronomers still regard liquid water as the basic condition for finding alien life?
In fact, the answer is very simple: if you were asked to find alien life, how would you find it? What standards should be used to find it?
The result is obvious. You will still look for liquid water as the standard, unless you do not set any standards in the process of finding alien life! But without standards means having no direction, just like a headless fly running around?
For hundreds of years, scientists have not failed to find other possible ways of life, but in the end they have not discovered any life forms that can leave liquid water.
Scientists have questioned whether liquid water is really a necessary condition for the existence of life. In fact, many scientists have raised questions and tried to explore and discover relevant evidence, but have not been found so far.
Science always moves forward through constant questioning and verification, but it is not possible to just question. There must be evidence after questioning to be convincing, otherwise it is not science.
At the same time, scientists have never said that there is no other life form, because they have not found any evidence that there is no other life form, and it is almost impossible to prove that there is no other life form.
More importantly, in the process of finding alien life, one of the biggest prerequisites is to prove that a certain form of life can exist, rather than prove that it does not exist.
No scientist says that life will definitely not exist without liquid water, but scientists all know that existing life requires liquid water. Scientists are more concerned about causality: if there is liquid water, there must be life (at least on Earth). Without liquid water, there is not necessarily no life.
Do you want certain or not?
The process of scientific exploration and research is based on money and time. All choices of directions are very serious and rigorous, because scientists know that if the direction is wrong, they are likely to be destined to be mediocre all their lives.
. Everyone knows that the direction of liquid water is definitely not wrong, and other directions may not be wrong, but we don’t know which direction is right. Astronomers don’t have the time, energy, and money to try and make mistakes one by one.
Many people always say this, it is very likely that there are unknown forms of life, most people have this perception, and I also believe that there may be other unknown forms of life.
But since that life form is unknown, how should we find it? Unknown means that everything is possible, which actually has no guiding significance for scientific research. To put it bluntly, "everything is possible" means "nothing is known", but it just sounds nice to use "everything is possible"!
