All life on Earth is based on the building block element carbon with water as the solvent in which biochemical reactions take place. The combination of carbon and water in the chemical form (CH2O)n, is the chemical form of the sugars, which as well as providing the energy on which life depends (largely through the oxidation of glucose, a six carbon sugar), also provides structural elements for life (such as the sugar ribose, a five carbon sugar, in the molecules DNA and RNA). Life requires carbon in both reduced (methane derivatives) and partially-oxidized (carbon oxides) states. It also requires nitrogen as a reduced ammonia derivative in all proteins, sulfur as a derivative of hydrogen sulfide in some necessary proteins, and phosphorus oxidized to phosphates in genetic material and in energy transfer. Adequate water as a solvent supplies adequate oxygen as constituents of biochemical substances.
Pure water is useful because it has a neutral pH, due to its continued dissociation between hydroxide and hydronium ions. As a result, it can dissolve both positive metallic ions and negative non-metallic ions with equal ability. Furthermore, the fact that organic molecules can be either hydrophobic (repelled by water) or hydrophilic (soluble in water) creates the ability of organic compounds to orient themselves to form water-enclosing membranes. The fact that solid water (ice) is less dense than liquid water also means that ice floats, thereby preventing Earth's oceans from slowly freezing solid. Additionally, the Van der Waals forces between water molecules give it an ability to store energy with evaporation, which upon condensation is released. This helps moderate climate, cooling the tropics and warming the poles, helping to maintain a thermodynamic stability needed for life.
Carbon is fundamental to terrestrial life for its immense flexibility in creating covalent chemical bonds with a variety of non-metallic elements, principally nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen. Carbon dioxide and water together enable the storage of solar energy in sugars, such as glucose. The oxidation of glucose releases biochemical energy needed to fuel all other biochemical reactions.
The ability to form organic acids (–COOH) and amine bases (–NH2) gives it the possibility of neutralisation dehydrating reactions to build long polymer peptides and catalytic proteins from monomer amino acids, and with phosphates to build not only DNA, the information storing molecule of inheritance, but also adenosine triphosphate (ATP) the principal energy "currency" of cellular life.
Given their relative abundance and usefulness in sustaining life it has long been assumed that life forms elsewhere in the universe will also utilize these basic components. However, other elements and solvents might be capable of providing a basis for life. Silicon is usually considered the most likely alternative to carbon, though this remains improbable. Silicon life forms are proposed to have a crystalline morphology, and are theorized to be able to exist in high temperatures, such as on planets which are very close to their star. Life forms based in ammonia rather than water are also considered, though this solution appears less optimal than water.
Indeed, technically life is little more than any self-replicating reaction, which could arise in a great many conditions and with various ingredients, though carbon-oxygen within the liquid temperature range of water seems most conducive. Suggestions have even been made that self-replicating reactions of some sort could occur within the plasma of a star, though it would be highly unconventional.
Several pre-conceived ideas about the characteristics of life outside of Earth have been questioned. For example, NASA scientists believe that the color of plant pigments on extrasolar planets could be non-green. Wikipedia
