Does All Life Need Water and Oxygen?

[AlmaChalabi]

These videos never failed to make me feel these stuff in my stomach

[GloriousGandalf]

In my grade 9 science class, a question on a test was "What requirements would another planet need for life to develop?" I answered something about how we couldn't possibly know, as life on another planet need not necessarily have the same requirements as life on earth does. My answer was marked wrong. I knew the teacher wanted water and oxygen as the answer, but I couldn't write that in good faith. Still kind of upset I lost a mark for that.

[FinleyBansak]

Yeah, we don't know. It's like trying to imagine a new color

[PotatoSpines_]

Project Hail Mary is a masterpiece. One of my fav books! I hope this shout out will get more people to read it.

[SKOLProds]

I’ve read that book before, one of my favorites of all time!

[stormwarrior]

Bro as soon as soon as you read out the question, it immediately reminded me of Project Hail Mary lol. In fact, I have the book on my desk right now, reading it for the fifth time. It's one of my favorite books of all time and I highly suggest it to everyone. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but the alien life that Andy Weir, the author, comes up with, is insanely creative and the way the main character manages to communicate with it using music, and form a friendship with the creature in the book is also very ingenious of the author.

[DanielKotovsky]

Questions that bother me the most are:
1) How the life formed? How something non-alive turned alive, or just how something alive appeared?
2) Why life appeared? What was the purpose of life appearing? Why something turned alive, just to strive for survival?

[TheIrishPrincessIsHeaven]

I love this guy sm. He can explain almost anything no matter how complicated, so simply for us to understand, I can understand him better than my teachers

[Watcher]

Just pray that we dont EVER find inter-galactic megafauna 💀

[avenuesandalleyways]

THAT BOOK IS SO GOOD I JUST FINISHED LAST WEEK IT WAS FANTASTIC!!

[yannck]

Technically not all lifeforms require oxygen. The part oxygen plays in most lifeforms is as an electron acceptor during respiration (not breathing, but the process going on in your mitochondria). But oxygen isn't the only compound that can fulfill this function. Some bacteria, I believe, use nitrates or sulphates as electron acceptors. And thus aren't dependent on oxygen. The only reason the usage of oxygen is so prevalent here on earth, is because of how easily available it is in the air.
There can be planets out there supporting lifeforms solely using nitrate-based respiration, which could be overlooked by looking exclusively for water and oxygen.
Of course these planets are not viable for human survival, but knowing there's other life out there, is an equally important discovery all by itself

[ndbrain]

We should be looking for nitroplast and chemosynthesis life too. Would make a lot more planets potentially harbor life.

[SONYSIKE]

Dude, i cant wait for the movie. Really interested to see how it will turn out in the movie.

[DKtrek]

I think people just want to see what we are accustomed to. Imagine two separate species from two separate exoplanets. One is like us, made of carbon, needs water and food to survive. He other is a photosynthetic species, they need only sunlight to survive. The carbon based one can be friendly or would see us as competition. A 50/50 chance. The other photosynthetic species would definitely wage war on us when they see us eating plants. A 100% reason to defend themselves

[Noobixm]

How would you even define life? Like why are viruses not living despite moving and seemingly having the ability to act? The same question must be asked when looking for aliens.

[benyosipovich]

Life as we know it also requires carbon to form, as carbon is the only element in the periodic table that is able to form the long chains with itself that enable life

[DragonTheButcher]

I’ve been saying this for so long, we only know life as it is on Earth when it could exist in ways we don’t and/or can’t figure out. It always upsets me when people act like humans know everything when it’s clear we don’t. An intelligent person will realize how much they don’t know which is why many intelligent people use caveats with their words and not absolutes. Like “for certain” or “100%” unpredictable it’s something that can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt like 2+2=4

[teaandcrumpetsmlady]

YES!!! My dad and I read that book together, we were hooked! Only problem is the ending was a bit of a cop out (in our opinion, of course) But otherwise, 9.5/10, would recommend!!!

Btw, I absolutely love your shorts. You answer a lot of my questions as a space nerd

[alphariusomegon]

That is bringing up another good question, what could be considered sentient and are there different forms of sentients different to our own?

We consider Humans and most other living organism sentient, intelligents is another question, but we are still figuring out of multi specie organism, like Man'o'war, or way more simple lifeforms, like plants or Fungi, actually sense their environment to react to it.

Maybe we found one day a form of live which is a bunch of anorganic material, like metal or stone, which is reacting in a sentient manner to his environment...

[BuluJenkins-gxji]

I never thought I’d see the day that someone acknowledged that not all life is possibly like our own on earth🙌