Serious question:
Why don't we know for certain there's life on other planets? If only microbial. The recipe for life is literally just heat and liquid water, right?
If Ganymede has an icy surface and liquid underneath, which we know because of geysers, it has to be heated to keep it liquid? So there should theoretically definitely be some sort of life, right?
>The recipe for life is literally just heat and liquid water, right?
No, not really. Not even close
>>7642914
Obviously there's more to it but that's just the very basics of what's needed and that's what Ganymede has, correct?
>>7642897
>it has to be heated to keep it liquid?
No, not really.
As long as the pressure's right, water below 0 can be liquid.
>>7642897
We don't know what is required for life until we synthetically create an original (as in not a replica of an already existing one) artificial organism.
When we reach that point then we will know for sure.
And while there may be organisms in Ganymede it would be useless to say that there are. We haven't observed it and we are too far away from predicting that kind of thing.
So if you want definitive answers then pressure your politicians to keep funding their space programs so that the missions that answer these questions happen earlier.
>>7642932
I guess that would explain the geysers, too, huh... what are the chances that there are geothermal vents, though? I'm excitedly awaiting the data that probe I don't remember the name that took samples from a geyser the other day
>>7642939
I imagine ganymede could be geologically active, since it would be internally heated by jupiter
I dunno, why don't you look that one up yourself
>>7642897
The places we've probed thoroughly, such as Mars, don't have any life. Most of the other canidates (Titan, Ganymede, Europa, etc) are so far away it would be insanely expensive and take forever to reach them.
>>7643261
>The places we've probed thoroughly, such as Mars, don't have any life
but we haven't checked underground yet
>>7642897
>Why don't we know for certain there's life on other planets?
Because there is currently no evidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO0ptQHxHYE
This process occurs in every living organism, including microbial and single celled. Even with liquid water, heat, and tons and tons of organic compounds it would take incredibly long for a formation like this to occur randomly. And I'm strictly speaking about the entropy, that is the amount of ways the molecules can be arranged. This doesn't even take into consider whether the formation will function once put in place, or the other components of the cell. Moons like Ganymede just formed too recently compared to earth to have a significant chance of life forming.
