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Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet

(www.nytimes.com)
168 points julienchastang | 1 comments | 16 Apr 25 23:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.237s | 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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Buttons840 ◴[17 Apr 25 02:24 UTC] No.43712493[source]▶
Land animals are more likely to develop hands. Hands wouldn't give a fish any advantage, because there is nothing to climb.

Building a rocket requires hands, and the type of intelligence that evolves only after having hands.

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1. Terr_ ◴[17 Apr 25 02:45 UTC] No.43712602[source]▶
> Hands wouldn't give a fish any advantage, because there is nothing to climb.

The ocean floor has plenty of stuff to dig into, pick up, and manipulate, along with un-anchored things like mats of seaweed.

> Land animals are more likely to develop hands.

I can easily imagine sea-creatures making the same kinds of assumptions in reverse: "Sir Blub-blub, while this hypothesis of 'land' animals is indeed intriguing, they would undoubtedly be primitive, far less likely to develop intelligent grabbers. After all, there will be nothing worth grabbing but hard 'dry' rocks! They wouldn't even be useful for propulsion, given the intangibility of this 'air'."