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Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet

(www.nytimes.com)
168 points julienchastang | 2 comments | 16 Apr 25 23:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.569s | source
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belinder ◴[17 Apr 25 00:04 UTC] No.43711682[source]▶
If life evolves on a planet with only oceans, no surface, imagine how much longer it would take to discover rockets that can leave the planet.

Like if there was no surface on earth, and only fish, there must be some very significant reason for advanced fish to even want to leave the water, let alone the atmosphere

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slg ◴[17 Apr 25 00:14 UTC] No.43711724[source]▶
That seems like a very landbased mindset. From a high level, what is an ocean but a thick atmosphere? I could even imagine an underwater culture would be quicker to explore because they would surely discover the surface of the ocean quicker than we discovered the concept of the atmosphere and that innately leads to the questions of whether the atmosphere has a "surface" and what is above it.
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fhdkweig ◴[17 Apr 25 01:04 UTC] No.43712023[source]▶
There is also the issue that they will likely never discover fire and thus chemistry and metallurgy.
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1. slg ◴[17 Apr 25 01:38 UTC] No.43712234[source]▶
This still seems to be based on assumptions coming from our own history and situation. I don't know why some hypothetical species needs fire for chemistry or even metallurgy for that matter or why an underwater civilization couldn't eventually discover fire themselves. There is also the potential that our reliance on combustion based rocketry is actually a crutch preventing us further space exploration considering how impractical it seems for interstellar travel.
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2. ◴[17 Apr 25 02:00 UTC] No.43712343[source]▶