Desert planet water replacement?

[BassClarinetBoss]

I've been playing this game called Space Engine, which is a virtual planetarium where you can explore the cataloged universe, and procedural objects generated by the game. I have been working on this project where I utilize a life-calculating equation and create cultures and societies for planets that I find. I keep on coming across several desert planets with organic(carbon-based) life, and that just completely boggles my mind.

 

Water is a solvent for all life, as we know it, yet ammonia can also be used, but only for exotic life.

Desert planets are, by definition, planets with little/no liquid. How would life evolve on such planets with no biological solvent?

 

For example, in version 9.7.1., RS 0-0-0-607-3065-7-1891188-70 5, or Atu, as I have dubbed it, is a desert planet that is around -109.9F, and has large alpines and deserts that range from pink to purple. Herein lies yet another concern. Why would a desert have plaines of pink and purple? Yes, there are mountains scattered about that are hues of peach and gray, but what elements would permit these colours?

 

 

TL,DR: How would organic life on desert planets work w/out water?

Why do a good majority of desert planets have pink and purple hues?

[grimace]

As far as any type of life we know if, it wouldn't work at all.

[kitsune93]

Life as it is on this planet couldn't evolve.

But whose to say that the only way life can evolve is with water?

Maybe life can evolve in the sand on these desert planets. They'd be completely different from anything we know though.

[zorua9]

I guess it depends on the planet and it's environment, it might be a lot cooler underground, and it might have pockets of water, or a liquid type thing that stuff can evolve in.

[SUP3RSPAWN3R]

Who says all aliens are carbon-based humanoids like us? Water Bears can survive years and years without water (or even in space), so water is not always needed. Granted, water bears pretty much become dead until re-hydrated, when they pop back alive like nothing happened. The alien life-forms could be silicon based (or even be made of more exotic materials), and metabolize totally different compounds to live.

[BassClarinetBoss]

Yes, I know this, but this is organic life. Carbon-based. Non-exotic. I would have assumed this life to be exotic, had it not been delineated by the game as organic. Now this may be one planet here, but there are several examples of desert planets with organic multicellular life. It could be because of some unknown, enigmatic organic molecule we haven't an idea of because of our natatory origins.

 

However, we would know of such molecule, right?

We, as humans, know how several exotic forms of life can function, such as silicon-based, ammonia-based, and even boron-based life, yet those wouldn't ever, to our knowledge, be as abled to have any carbon-based level of sapience.

[octopi]

Maybe it's because it's a game and therefore it's impossible for it to be 100% realistic :V

 

I'm not super educated on the matter, but really, who are we to determine which "forms of life" are capable of evolution/sapience? All we can study so far is one planet with one form of life on it, and to assume that this form of life is superior to all others seems really narcissistic to me.

[BassClarinetBoss]

That is a very valid point, and although I understand that this is a game, it is still good to exercise this kind of thinking. The main reason why I think that carbon-based life would be more suited for existential thought is because it is the most stable and the quickest-evolving form of life that we humans know of(or at least from what I've read from several, several books and detailed passages on the internet, which isn't a trusted source, but a lot checks out.).

I wan't trying to say that organic life was superior to those kind of processes, just more ideal. Heck, if we find methane-based life on some far-off exoplanet, it could very well be much more advanced than us! As you said, however, we'll never know about how other forms of life evolve and go about their extraterrestrial lives unless we find them in real life. The closest bet we have is Titan, however...