life

[knobbynonuts]

if life on this planet come from water, thinking outside the box can life come from diffrent compounds or elements? and could life adapt to other hostile envroments such as mars or jupiter's atmosphear

[jake-the-peg]

In theory Life could exist with a totally different basis - however the number of possibilities is probably relatively small - this is why it makes sense for us to concentrate looking for a water based life because we know that that is possible.

In recent years we have discovered that life forms called extremeophiles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophiles can exist in the harshest conditions some have even been found in nuclear reactors!

However these are very simple organisms whether something complex could exist in these sorts of conditions is more doubtful.

[knobbynonuts]

thanks for that, Extremophile's seem very interesting how they live on such a hostile environment but surely these could live on other planets and over time evolve into more complex life?

just wondering if you or any1 works within science for a living? i would like to know about what jobs are in science mainly chemistry

[jake-the-peg]

Well this is the point that finding life is one thing but finding advanced life is another.

The first life forms appeared about 4 billion years ago - very soon after the Earth formed about 4.5 billions of years ago.

But multicellular life didn't appear until 600 million years ago.

That's 3.5 billion years of slime!

You might be interested in these 3 radio programs you can listen to on-line
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/earthmadef orlife.shtml