+44 Thinking that an exoplanet cannot support life cuz the conditions aren't according to human tolerance levels is extremely naive, amirite?

by dereck22 1 day ago

The main metric that's used to judge whether a planet is habitable or not is whether it's possible for liquid water to exist or not - it doesn't really have anything to do with human tolerance levels.

by reinamarks 1 day ago

I feel like we mostly approach it from the other direction though. We don't say "this planet couldn't support life", instead we look at the known planets and list ones that have conditions that we KNOW are conducive to life, because we've seen life in those conditions

by Anonymous 1 day ago

Well, we don't really have much of an info now. The only sample of live we've encountered so far are we ourselves, so we are the only metric we can use.

by Extra-Cricket2349 1 day ago

i think it generally means if you go outside with normal clothes, and die, its uninhabitable. we can, of course, colonize them anyway, we have the technology to bypass that, its just much more expensive.

by Anonymous 1 day ago