Tony Summers writes (from the UK):

>My irritation with this subject is the scientists' blind assumption that all
>life forms have to be based on WATER - what's wrong with Alcohol ?

My all-too-limited experience with life in England suggests that alcohol
is in fact essential for life.

-- Bruce

PS. That's not a blind assumption, but a useful working hypothesis. Water
is readily formed and is very stable, it's liquid over a wide range of
temperatures that happen to correspond with those at which large organic
molecules are stable, it's a good solvent and so on. Alcohol doesn't have
these properties.

Incidentally, ammonia has also been proposed as a substrate for life; it
shares some of the same characteristics in a somewhat lower temperature
range. But if your're designing chemistry experiments to detect life,
it's best to stick with the reactions you know are associated with life.
The Viking landers (23+ years ago -- sheesh) turned up some very
interesting chemistry that could, on an outside chance, be associated
with life. It's to avoid such ambiguity that we stick with reactions we
know about.

A well-debated problem, which I won't go into here, is how to recognize
life -- especially, how to recognize it from a distance and with a
limited set of experiments. There is a certain amount of water/carbon
chauvinism, but there are good reasons for holding that view.

- B


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