Learning the cosmos a little at a time, the sooner we can all get along on earth the sooner we can get out of here!

Send it back here on Earth, my furnace can make good use of it! :-)

The Methane Cycle. Could be the basis for life there, instead of the Water Cycle.

Many other liquids could be used to support life on other planets, depending on local conditions.

It wouldn't be methane, it's not polar in the slightest.

The reason why we limit the amount of liquids that can be used is that they need to be polarized, meaning that one end of the molecule has a negative charge, and the other side is positive and the bigger the difference the better. These particular liquids have good dissolving properties which is critical for life.

Methane just isn't one of those.

Mitchell

Hmm. Terracentric thinking, or at least anthropocentric.

Life will not necessarily look like us, even at the molecular level.

It's not terracentric thinking, it's chemistry.

There are limited ways for work to be done inside any given system. For biological life, there needs to be a transport for food and waste, that requires a liquid that can readily dissolve stuff which means it has to be polar. No matter how much wishing thinking you have, methane just won't be a transport mechanism.

Mitchell

Again, thinking alien life has to operate like life on Earth.

What mitchell says makes sense, but yes, life elsewhere could potentially find a different way to move resources and waste around without the need to dissolve it.

Food and waste were just examples, there's a whole huge list of reactions and mechanisms that requires a solvent. These are basic chemical processes that life has to work with. This isn't fitting alien life into what we find here on Earth, it's fitting any life into a way that chemistry will allow it to exist.

So, unless you can find a mechanism that would allow for mechanical life to form, all biological life has to work using osmosis and certain other reactions which will require a solvent.

Mitchell

Yes, but we keep finding that even life on Earth does not fit the mold of what we used to think life needed to exist. If you get your head out of the standard model, other possibilities present themselves.

Copernicus would not publish that the Earth revolved around the Sun because he knew it would be controversial. New ideas don't flourish because people are scared to go against the grain.

That's not an argument Tony. You're thinking about discussions like silicon vs carbon, copper vs iron, or other ways to store genetic data etc. Stuff like that is absolutely up for grabs. But what I'm arguing is different. Methane just isn't a catalyst for any reactions, much less any kind that of life form would require.

There absolutely needs to be a driving force behind chemical reactions for life to occur. Water is that substance here on Earth, it doesn't need to be, there are other liquids that could be used, various alcohols or even some hydrocarbons for example. However scientists label them as unlikely to extremely unlikely because you really don't see natural (as opposed to biological) processes create those. That's why they concentrate on water. However, methane is about as neutral as you get in a molecule and you just won't see it use like water.

Doesn't mean that some life won't require it, not it's not a basis for life the way water is.

Mitchell