"Ionic Liquids" Could Redefine the Habitable Zone

Artist's impression of exoplanet Kepler 1649c. Credit - NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter

“Follow the water” has been a guiding mantra of astrobiology, and even space exploration more generally for decades. If you want to find life, it makes sense to look for the universal solvent that almost all types of life on Earth use. But what if life doesn’t actually need water to live or even evolve? A recent paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by researchers at MIT, including Dr. Sara Seager, and the University of Cardiff, proposes an alternative to water as the basis for life - ionic liquids (ILs) and deep eutectic solvents (DES). These liquids could allow life to exist in environments we had once thought were far too hot, too cold, or too barren to support life, and could dramatically change our search for it throughout the cosmos.

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Researchers Match Up 12 Meteorites with the Near-Earth Asteroids They Came From

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