[grey_whiskers]

Other common and simple inorganic molecules will work pretty well under mildly different parameters (ammonia, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, etc), and under more extreme environments you can have complex solvent chemistries based on liquid metals -- some very exotic molecular materials can be precipitated from liquid metal solutions.

Sure you can. But just having an alternative solvent will not produce, nor will it necessarily support life.

What is the hydrogen bonding in ammonia compared to water? How would that affect the double helix of DNA, or the primary, secondary, tertiary structure of proteins? What of cell walls? What of the reaction rates for Krebs cycle, etc.?

Insert obligatory "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it" here.

Cheers!

[tortoise]

Sure you can. But just having an alternative solvent will not produce, nor will it necessarily support life. What is the hydrogen bonding in ammonia compared to water? How would that affect the double helix of DNA, or the primary, secondary, tertiary structure of proteins? What of cell walls? What of the reaction rates for Krebs cycle, etc.?

This is making a rather extraordinary number of assumptions about what constitutes "life". DNA, and even organic chemistry, are very much irrelevant when discussing such things in the abstract. The argument is not about life on this planet as it actually is, as it theoretically could be, or even necessarily as it can be in this universe.

Insert obligatory "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it" here.

Precisely.