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THE GIST
Earth's moon helped stabilize the planet's tilt, making its climate suitable for advanced life.
Without a moon, life on Earth probably would have flourished as well, since Jupiter and other factors exert a steadying hand.
The research has implications for understanding if planets in habitable zones are indeed suitable for life.
The study also showed that if Earth revolved around the sun in the opposite direction, called a retrograde orbit, it wouldn't need a moon at all to have a climate about as stable as it has today. Likewise, a Jupiter about half the distance to Earth as its present location would have had a similar steading hand, Barnes added.
Originally posted by TrueBrit
Personaly speaking, I do not believe that LIFE needs any particular strict things that you or I would recognise as ingredients or building blocks. I believe that life will eventualy be found in more star systems than not. However, I do not believe that we will be able to recognise what is infront of our faces for many years after we get to that stage. I believe that we have yet to discover that life requires not flesh, nor chemical process , nor intelligence, in order to be life,and be important.
I have no doubt that there are other flesh life forms out there, and I have no doubt that somewhere out there there is mind, and deeply intelligent mind as well. But I also think there are going to be energy beings, life forms made of what appears to be stone, life forms made of barely cohesive clouds of gas, plants with intellect, and so on.
I also believe that we will find this life in places which appear utterly opposite to those traditional goldilocks zone planets that everyone gets creamy over. Life will be found in radiological hells, in cyanide rich atmospheres, in terrains washed by sulphuric and hydrochloric acid rain of molar strength we just arent familiar with on earth, and in a thousand , a million other suposedly impossible situations.
In essence , I do not think we know enough about how we got to be here, to say how anything else might evolve. Furthermore, until we find something out there, until we expand our knowledge by visiting and sampling other places in the galaxies, we will not know enough to make any assumptions about where and what may be out there.