SETI and the "oxygen bottleneck"

[wellwisher]

But if water is not available, another substrate is the only possibility. If methane or ammonia seas are the only medium, life will avail itself of these.

Happy Birthday.

If so, there will still be the oxygen bottleneck, since ammonia and methane are very combustible with oxygen. These solvents for life cannot take advantage of the oxygen, without meeting their own doom.

The other problems with these two solvents are the energy floors are too high; very energy rich molecules. Plus the liquid state for these two materials occur at very low temperature. Reaction kinetics will be very slow even under good conditions, and if we add the their narrow energy bandwidth, it would take forever.

The unusually high melting and boiling points of water and its much lower energy floor, allow more energy bandwidth and easier reactions for a faster evolve. More advanced life with tech will benefit by the speed of water evolution and the continued stable O2 boost.