Why there might be life out there unlike any on Earth

Imagine the possibility of life forms on other planets that don’t resemble any on Earth. For more than 10 years, the senior research fellow in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences and the Origins of Life Initiative at Harvard has studied how to produce synthetic living systems — without relying on biochemistry, or the chemistry that has enabled life on Earth. “We have been trying to build a non-biochemical system, which unaided is capable of executing the essential properties common to all natural living systems,” Pérez-Mercader explained. His team’s findings beg the question: Could there be chemistries beyond Earth capable of implementing the fundamental properties of life? “I believe we should be very open about other forms of life elsewhere in the universe, and that they may not resemble life as we recognize it now.”