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> That’s why it always annoys me when “scientists” always want to find a planet in a “habitable zone” to search for life, but that doesn’t make any sense,

Imagine no-one had ever seen crabs before, then imagine we went to the beach and discovered crabs. Then one of us says, "I wonder if crabs exist anywhere else on the planet?"

Where would you look first?

Do you check the centre of an active volcano on the off chance that some crabs have properties that allows them to live in lava, despite the fact we have no idea what properties they would need or whether it's possible for those properties to exist?

Would you look in clouds in case gas crabs exist in clouds. Again no idea what a cloud crab would look like, if it even looked like anything and no idea how we would detect such a thing is even there. Solid demonstration of thinking outside the box though.

Or... do you go to another beach and look there?

Scientists search for planets with conditions similar to earth because they know those conditions will support life. This doesn't rule out the possibility that other life forms could exist under other conditions, we just haven't discovered other types of life forms so we don't know where else to look or what else to look for.

Looking to find a habitable planet makes sense since we could ourselves visit and interact. Humans don’t want to look for life forms in the sun or in a nuclear waste.

A lot of people and scientists are people look outside the habitual zones. Good points in your post.

You’re correct, it could. We just haven’t found proof of it yet, and people are hesitant to make unfounded claims that would be such a paradigm shift to our understanding of the universe.

>why can’t it also randomly appear in the oceans of Titan

I was under the impression it was generally accepted that it could be there, and it merits investigation.

That's one of the big questions, isn't it? Is life rare or common? Be cooler if it turned outto be common.

With an infinite amount of time, almost anything can happen under the right conditions.

We have evidence on this planet in the form of extremophiles that it is possible.

First you need to define what life is.

Is a molecule that replicates itself life? Is a computer programme that replicates itself life?

>Scientists need to think outside the box instead of thinking in a conformed way governed by rules and principles, basically, scientists are searching the wrong places.

Scientists are searching there too. You aren't the first to think of that. It's just hard to actually do that.

Because if there is a lifeform that can thrive in liquid methane, we don't know anything about it. There could be life that can thrive in planets with no atmosphere for all we know, which is very, very little. Which is why scientists work with what they know, which is Earth.

My best guess is that life is quite common in the universe, it is usually based on similar biochemistry to life on Earth, but it is only rarely as advanced. However, I could be wrong on any of these points.

In particular, we don't know what it takes to get life started. It might be that the watery habitats like those on Titan often have primitive single cell life. The conditions needed to evolve to higher lifeforms are only slightly better known, but it took a long time to get started.

So life on Titan is certainly possible. It may be simple, but perhaps we will be surprised when we finally get some probes into its deep oceans.

Whether life is always similar to Earth life and requires Earth-like conditions, or can appear in different forms almost anywhere, is a huge unknown. I think exobiologistes are more open minded about this than you give them credit for, but there is good reason to think that very hot or very cold environments will be less promising, especially for more advanced lifeforms that we have a chance of detecting.

Well, it does make sense to look at a "habitable zone." Maybe not habitable for other life forms, but for Earthlings, it is.

And that's the thing. The only life we know is from Earth. So, most people will research planets that look like ours because we certainly know h20-like planets could harbor life.

And there'll probably be someone out there who is looking at the other planets for life forms, but not much.

Why don't we mainly look at the moon for life forms? Because we don't have any life forms made from rocks here on Earth. So it doesn't make much sense to extensively look for it there.

Your premise is false. Scientists don't only look at life similar to earth. However, they put most of the focus on that. They do it for a few very good reasons, for one, they know earth like conditions can produce life, therefore if they find earth like conditions they will likely find life. Secondly, given that we have a good example of life here, we know what to look for. What do you think would be the characteristics of silicone based life for example? Because we dont either, hence, harder to look for

We have a sample size of 1. All we know about how life is created and evolves comes from our one single experience. So the most logical thing to look for would be similar circumstances. We have no data to support the idea that life could form under any other condition so why look for the unknown?

Why should we not look on the surface of the sun for life? We know for 100% certainty that life CAN exist in the habitable zone. That’s it, that’s all we know. We don’t know if there is other forms of life, but it would make astronomically more sense to look for what we know CAN exist than taking stabs in the dark at what MIGHT exist.

Science has found other ways to create life. Instead of carbon based life forms I think it was phosphorus (can't find the article from nearly a decade so I'm prob incorrect about the element). So I think they are interested in those conditions as well but as many posters have already stated, we know life exists under these conditions so let's see where else these conditions exist. But you don't hear from the other end of that very often because not a lot of progress has been made there. Keep in mind they work off grants primarily for funding. No results usually=no more $$. So it's gotta be difficult to research things that seem far fetched.

Liquid water is almost a prerequisite due to how chemistry works.

I’d challenge you to do some deeper research on the subject. It sounds like your idea of what “scientists” in this field do is misguided and naive

life is a thermodynamic process, it exists at that gradient between "hot" and "cold". life takes Energy, organizes itself at the cost of disorganizing the universe slightly more, and expends waste heat into the cold of the universe. the "habitable zone" is where this process works best, the chemistry works best, it is where it is most likely to occur. it is not "random" as you put it, but rather on a bell curve of probability. , too hot, low chance.. too cold.. low chance..

now life may very well exist on titan, and when more probes are sent, they will either confirm it or deny it. however the probability of life existing there is not so great, simply because it's too cold, and the chemistry and thermodynamics don't support it

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The important condition is brownian motion due to sufficient temperature inside the lifeform which allow known random mechanisms to act or form.

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At least for life as we know it it's very unlikely such can arise in methane seas. The cellular membrane is dependent on the interaction between water and lipids (fat) to even exist. If I remember my chemistry correctly methane does not have the "magnetic" property that water molecules have, which is super important for the chemistry of Earth life.

Water is weird chemistry-wise, and that's why there is so much focus on finding liquid water when it comes to xenobiology. If there actually is life on Titan, its chemistry must have to be radically different than our own, something we can't really envision.

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There is so much we not only don't understand, but can't comprehend, so my vote is solidly on yes.

It can, and perhaps will, or has. Life can sometimes spontaneously come into being out of a variety of non-living inorganic materials, such as water and other chemicals on the periodic chart, mixed at just the right temperature and ratios, with some electrical charges to jump start the reaction. It's pretty amazing when it happens and the examples I've seen are rather astounding and hard to believe. And the experiments conducted have proved how amazing this phenomenon is.

We don't know either way. All we have right now are theory and some observations that don't violate all the theories.

For all you know, there might be life on Jupiter, Saturn, etc. Those life may thrive on those planets atmosphere and gasses