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Old 26-March-2008, 07:02 PM
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eburacum45 eburacum45 is offline
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Life as we don't know it might not need water-
this on-line book has a chapters which discusses alternatives to water.
The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems (check out chapter 6)
the rest of it is an interesting read too.

I think that much, perhaps most of the life in the universe might not use water as a primary solvent- particularly if that life has been created artificially and is robotic in nature.

On the other hand, true self-replicating robots might require water to reproduce- In fact they might be very similar to biologically evolved life in composition. The whole question of artificial self-replicating devices is still pretty much all speculation at the moment.
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