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Originally posted by Danny
I agree with you totally, I was just adding another argument in parallel to yours... I was just saying that Life doesn't necessarily require an environment identical to Earth's in order to survive, so that Life could well evolve to be not only superficially different (which is what your argument is mainly geared towards pointing out) but fundamentally different...
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Exactly, well put. We have both the chance for minor (in the evolutionary sense, that is. To us it's still pretty major) change in similar planets, and unpredictably enormous change in dissimilar ones. Who knows? Maybe life can even exist off of planets, in mineral rich nebulae and the even the cold of space, in which cases it would be fantastically weird. The bottom line is nobody knows anything at all about extraterrestrial life, which is what makes the search that much more enticing.
But isn't it fun to sit down with a book of human facial anatomy, tweek this and elongate that, and come up with a brand new world full of strange creatures? Aliens are truly the modern day sea-monsters and dragons. They fuel minds that are both imaginative and philisophical, which is a wonderful combination.