Liquid water on Enceladus?

[Ramses II CP]

In theory life could exist almost anywhere, but the kind of life we could most easily recognize and potentially utilize is very likely based on the presence of some form of liquid water. Also if you subscribe to the Solar System as an ecosystem idea then potentially all life in our neighborhood is related in one way or another, which makes it massively more likely to require water.

[Ja'chyra]

In theory life could exist almost anywhere, but the kind of life we could most easily recognize and potentially utilize is very likely based on the presence of some form of liquid water. Also if you subscribe to the Solar System as an ecosystem idea then potentially all life in our neighborhood is related in one way or another, which makes it massively more likely to require water.

Hmm, the solar system as an ecosystem? Not buying that one.

Doesn't an ecosystem have to be interconnected and even interdependant? If so there would have to be space travel involved and any colonisation would have to come from another planet, the dependancy part would require constant contact. Even if this was the case there is no guarantee that the life would evolve in a common enough path to require water.

I agree that water being present gives a greater chance of life like us being present, aren't I open minded , but the way it's portrayed gives the impression that without water there can't be life.

[Ramses II CP]

The Solar System as ecosystem idea is a Sci Fi concept based on a very different time scale of life than the one we know. It doesn't require technological space travel as there are ample bodies moving through the system to spread life that evolved in deep space. The come around point of the cycle, which is to say the point at which life, deposited in a gravity well, returns to deep space doesn't even theoretically require technology as objects skim through the upper reaches of the atmosphere, where there is some life, all the time. It's a thin stretch, but we're not talking about a human scale biomass, more like a hibernation heavy bacterial colony.

This isn't to say I subscribe to the theory! I just find it a very interesting thought experiment. I think it originated back when there was some debate about whether or not all the key ingredients for life were present on the early earth.