Posthuman Blues

Water is not an essential ingredient for Life, scientists now claim

"While more exotic worlds might well harbour life, Mars remains the best bet. 'There was water on Mars when there was life on Earth,' Benner points out. 'This would not be particularly weird life, of course, in that it would be living in water, but it could easily be weird by Earth standards.' However, Benner concedes that 'a simple 'We don't know' is often the best answer for some questions. "Until life is encountered elsewhere, or aliens contact us, we will not have an independent second dataset. We may not even then, if the alien life itself shares an ancestor with life on Earth.'"