Finding extraterrestrial life in any form would be truly one of the largest discoveries in humankind’s history, yet after decades of scouring the surface of Mars and investigating other bodies like asteroids, we still have found no evidence. While we generally assume that we’re looking for carbon-based lifeforms in a water-rich environment like Jupiter’s moon Europa, what if complex organic chemistry would be just as happy with sulfuric acid (H2SO4) as solvent rather than dihydrogen monoxide (H2O)? This is the premise behind a range of recent studies, with a newly published research article in Astrobiology by [Maxwell D. Seager] and colleagues lending credence to this idea.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://hackaday.com/2024/03/25/complex-organic-chemistry-in-sulfuric-acid-and-life-on-venus/