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Bill Nye: The Search for Life Begins with Water | Big Think

Big Think | April 12, 2026



Bill Nye: The Search for Life Begins with Water
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What conditions are scientists looking for in their search for life on another planet? The presence of water is key, explains Bill Nye.
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Bill Nye:

Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life. In Seattle Nye began to combine his love of science with his flair for comedy, when he won the Steve Martin look-alike contest and developed dual careers as an engineer by day and a stand-up comic by night. Nye then quit his day engineering day job and made the transition to a night job as a comedy writer and performer on Seattle’s home-grown ensemble comedy show “Almost Live.” This is where “Bill Nye the Science Guy®” was born. The show appeared before Saturday Night Live and later on Comedy Central, originating at KING-TV, Seattle’s NBC affiliate. While working on the Science Guy show, Nye won seven national Emmy Awards for writing, performing, and producing. The show won 18 Emmys in five years. In between creating the shows, he wrote five children’s books about science, including his latest title, “Bill Nye’s Great Big Book of Tiny Germs.” Nye is the host of three currently-running television series. “The 100 Greatest Discoveries” airs on the Science Channel. “The Eyes of Nye” airs on PBS stations across the country. Bill’s latest project is hosting a show on Planet Green called “Stuff Happens.” It’s about environmentally responsible choices that consumers can make as they go about their day and their shopping. Also, you’ll see Nye in his good-natured rivalry with his neighbor Ed Begley. They compete to see who can save the most energy and produce the smallest carbon footprint. Nye has 4,000 watts of solar power and a solar-boosted hot water system. There’s also the low water use garden and underground watering system. It’s fun for him; he’s an engineer with an energy conservation hobby. Nye is currently the Executive Director of The Planetary Society, the world’s largest space interest organization.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Bill Nye: So people are always looking for water in space on other worlds, on other worlds orbiting other stars. There’s a whole class of scientists or discipline now called Astrobiology—life of other stars, life around other stars. So we figure there’s so many physical objects in our world, whether you’re a bumblebee or a petunia or—what else could you be?—an ancient dinosaur, a tyrannosaur, you are made of stuff and you walk around and you do things, or you grow toward the light, or you metabolize the seawater you live in. You’re some living thing.

So there’s always a solvent, as we say in chemistry, there’s always some liquid that dissolves these things. They’re chemicals, and you could move them around, redistribute them, make use of the chemicals, and then the solvent is largely unchanged. So astrobiologists have sought solvents, and right now water is the best one anyone can think of. Now, we haven’t thought of the other solvent on another world that drives life elsewhere, that is so far our problem. But the other big candidate, for you fans, is liquid ammonia, liquid ammonia. Okay, we haven’t found anything on the earth or near the earth that seems to live on liquid ammonia, but right now it’s water. Water seems to be the stuff.

So we are creating telescopes and system software behind telescopes that will allow us to detect water on another world. And you would say, how could we possibly do that, dozens, hundreds of light years away? You’re crazy, you’re squandering our tax dollars, this is madness. Oh no, my friends. When light passes through or reflects off of water it has a characteristic signature. There are spectral lines. There are constructed and destructed interference patterns in light associated with water that would allow us to determine whether or not they’re water.

And the other big thing is to look for the surface temperature of the distant planet. If the surface temperature is around 50, 80, 100 degrees Fahrenheit, then you’re probably onto something. If you’re millions of degrees Fahrenheit, probably no liquid water, and so on.

Written by Big Think

Comments

This post currently has 26 comments.

  1. @CP-nm2rx

    April 12, 2026 at 12:25 am

    Bill, stop lying, it's going to catch up with you and you will be sorry you told lies. The search for life also begins with who created water, etc, and why. Can you give that answer, Bill? Can you explain with 100% provable accuracy, not a wild guess, the first origins, cause and purpose of space, time, information, matter, energy, organization, change, and the like, and what happened before those things were created? Bet you can't! And don't try to pass off dumb ideas like nothing is the origin of something, like the universe, because only a completely insane person would even think that you can get anything from something that never existed before. Such wild ideas of something from nothing are totally preposterous and there is no evidence of it.

    Dinosaurs to birds:
    It's so easy to say that dinosaurs led to birds, but the problem with that is nobody has ever found the missing links that prove the evolution from dinosaurs to birds, there are no in-between creatures that look like a mixture of the two through the so called stages of change, all we ever see is that dinosaurs always look like dinosaurs and birds always look like birds, but hey, since when would an evolutionist atheist want to be exposed for the outright lies they tell? If dinosaurs turned into birds, they would be bad dinosaurs before they could become good birds that worked properly and so they just could not survive, and information does not improve or ad during change, information gets lost and degraded during change. Doesn't anyone understand that or understand thermodynamics?
    Evolutionists are horrible liars, yet so many fools follow their foolishness like it was real truth. Goes to show you how brain dead and dumb sheeple truly are. Shame on you, Bill, and your kind, for trying to pass off lies as truth and working to trick the world into swallowing those lies. Satan is the father of lies, and you are doing his will, and you will reap what you sow in the end.

  2. @LZRCuteR

    April 12, 2026 at 12:25 am

    Sure, water is absolutely necessary for life as we know it. Doesn't change the fact that most planets with water, even Mars, to the degree it has water, are so inhospitable and SOO far away (years to hundreds or thousands of years at max speed), would be so impractical to reach (trillions in cost for a small group to go) that it would NEVER be more cost effective to travel there than to fix our planet. Even if we killed all life on Earth with our blunders, at least Earth has the right conditions to re-establish life. No planet we have found would support our breathing needs or needs with regard to temperature (namely vast liquid water). Even if we found such a planet the soil would be completely barren – no organics to fertilize soil ( no carbons in the soil to build upon), most likely no nitrogen for plants, high salt ratios, etc; meaning we would have to bring our own topsoil at least to this new planet. That's IF it has an appropriate ozone, cloud cover, the UV protective and pressurizing combination of vapors and chemistry needed to contain a potential atmosphere, AND isn't too rich in nitrogen, sulfur, chlorine, or a host of over elements that become toxic at just above the concentrations found on Earth. Leaving Earth is not a solution that is worth pursuing. It would be easier to colonize the oceans than Mars, and far cheaper. THAT'S why looking for water in Space is dumb, and wastes millions of dollars. Until we figure out how to build vessels which can reach Mars with extreme ease and cost effectiveness, and until every last inch of Earth is spent or dying, going elsewhere wouldn't be an option considered in any decision making framework that isn't subsidized.

  3. @OmegaWolf747

    April 12, 2026 at 12:25 am

    Spectroscopy is one of the coolest things science has come up. The ability to read the makeup of a star or planet based on those little black bars over the rainbow is mind blowing.

  4. @lyricaltraveller

    April 12, 2026 at 12:25 am

    Alek Truitt I wasn't discussing science in general. Nobody can deny the scientific breakthroughs that have been made. I was talking specifically evolutionary science. While true science has a process of hypothesizing, test, proving or disproving, evolutionary science is devoid of this process. Instead, a conclusion is reached first and then the search of evidence is made. The problem with this is, it doesn't allow for the interpretation of the evidence to go any other way but toward the conclusion already made. When we are purposely looking for evidence to prove our belief correct, we usually find it and ignore anything that goes against our belief. This is how evolutionary science has become a religion. You see this same lack of desire for truth and instead a dogmatic approach to evidence. Many churches claim to teach the bible. But their personal traditions and beliefs take precedence over what the bible actually says. They look for support of their belief. They will take any scripture out of context and twist it to prove their belief. Evolutionary science does the same.

  5. @lyricaltraveller

    April 12, 2026 at 12:25 am

    This is proof that a degree doesn't make you intelligent. Any reasonable person knows that water is not the creator of life. It is a sustainer. It sustains the biology. Life and biology are two separate things. A good example is this. Say there are a set of twins. They both have arms and legs. Heart and other organs. They even have the same DNA. But one has life and the other does not. When there is no water, the biology breaks down. When the biology breaks down, it can no longer support life. Just because the building blocks of the biology are present. Just because there is water. Does not in any way show there is life. In reality, Bill and his other so called intelligent friends are more like creationist's. They just turned water into God.

  6. @lovepeaceandnikki

    April 12, 2026 at 12:25 am

    see the thing with science is that we don't have all the answers there is no shame in that. there is shame in pretending we have answers when we don't. that is the beauty of science. science is a tool that is ever changing, and mechanism that helps us search for truth with in this vast universe that we have only begun to understand.

  7. @cjrogers961

    April 12, 2026 at 12:25 am

     You know I was wondering, We may rely on water but we adapted to need water. why cant a organism rely on something else like maybe dirt (just an example obviously even if it's a bad one) but why do we think all organisms have to rely on water?

  8. @techedhiko9275

    April 12, 2026 at 12:25 am

    well think of a single celled orgisinam it might not need water to survive, lets say ammonia i know its toxic to us but you gotta think not all species need water their might be an ailen who needs a bleachy substance so in a way it depends on what the things body is suited to drink or eat

  9. @DinosaurKale

    April 12, 2026 at 12:25 am

    Is it possible to identify other likely requirements on planets hundreds of light years away with these same telescopes? Magnetic field and ozone shielding? O2 rich atmosphere? Historical atmospheres like the Co2 composition of our Ordovician Period to get the primitive plants started?

    How many planets are there within a few hundred light years? I'd like the believe we could find something out there, but it just seems untenable.

  10. @truedragondraig5372

    April 12, 2026 at 12:25 am

    water is one of the requirements for life and yes is only one. but water comes first churns the organic matter into what we call dna the atmosphere came from volcanic eruptions and atmosphere is something they look for. the oxygen part of the atmosphere came from plants as you already know.

  11. @formerevolutionist

    April 12, 2026 at 12:25 am

    Water is only one of the requirements for life. Evolutionists tend to believe that if there is water, then there could be life. If anyone believes all we need is water, they are welcome to live in the middle of the ocean. Also, if we do not possess the means of travelling to or communicating with other planets, then it is a waste of time, money, work, and resources to look for water anywhere else.

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