life adapts

While in school I remember answering one question, in different forms, in many science exams - list the five things necessary for orgination of life , List the features of earth that make life possible etc. I always answered it rightly clearly noting down the temperature, distance from sun, water, the right amount of gravity as different reasons but always inside me there used to be this excitement about what if this is not true and living things very different from us dependent on very different elements existed somewhere else and by chance someday we get to interact with them.

Science has now changed its views regarding this subject (either this or my school books always taught me the wrong thing!) and now scientists are starting to believe that it is not that earth has conditions suitable for life but that life somehow originated and then adapted itself to this environment. This view has gained more support after discovery of some very weird species on earth itself - like one discovered in the vents near the ocean bed which has a temperature gradient of over 100 degrees over its body.

While discussing this with a collegue of mine, he told me a fascinating thing. He said it did not come as a surprise to him and he always thought so. And as part of his reasoning asked me why do I think are air and water colorless, odourless and tasteless - because we have got used their color, odour and taste and cant sense them anymore. So if earth would have been full of ammonia instead we would not have smelled it and normal air would have been stinking as hell!