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Asked by biscuit3000 to Gavin, Karen, Mark, Michel, Roisin on 11 Nov 2016.
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Karen answered on 11 Nov 2016:
In a nutshell, we wouldn’t. Water is vital for life. In fact the average human is approx 60% water. Without water we would not have evolved so we just wouldn’t exist ?
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Roisin Jones answered on 13 Nov 2016:
Well, as Karen says, if water vanished now, we would definitely die, as we evolved in such a way that water is absolutely vital to our survival. In fact, this is true of every life form on earth: some life forms can live without oxygen, but every single one needs water to survive.
In fact, water is so vital to successful cell growth and evolution that when looking for extraterrestrial life, space agencies generally search for any potential water source as the first sign that life is possible on a planet, which is why the discovery of water (mostly as ice) on Mars is such an exciting one for scientists!
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Mark Kennedy answered on 14 Nov 2016:
A quick follow up to Roisin’s answer, she’s absolutely right about water being a very good indicator for life, and NASA have been looking at objects with water as potential places where extraterrestrial life might be. Other than Mars, there’s a moon that orbits Jupiter called Callisto and another moon that orbits Saturn called Enceladus that have water ice on the surface (and possibly oceans underneath!!).
Which means to find extraterrestrial life, we mightn’t even have to leave our solar system!
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