Find a compound that responds differently to heat and cold exchange first.
What element or compound can absorb as much heat or release/store as much heat as water?
Water is the one, which does not follow the periodic table of elements and remain predictable from what the other element's properties might predict.
Look again at the tables.
Figure out which other compound might weigh more than it should, might freeze at too low a temperature, might boil at too high a temperature.
TYou will h then have your other life "water."
Water is unique, as far as we know.
It has a very wide range from solid to liquid to to gas, compared to some others.
methane?
... before you go far with this ... joules?
How come it has to have characteristics like water? How do we know that organisms need to drink or get thirsty? What if they take in solids instead?
Dude, I have given this shit some thought. I am yet to be convinced that you have. It's NOT so much about liquid or solid as it is about heat exchange and heat tolerance before physical change.
Your're US based right? ... so I'll use Fahrenheit for temperature examples.
Methane turns from solid ice to a liquid at -297 degrees Farhenheit (yeah, I googled to get teh specifics) then remains in a liquid state for a mere few degrees. it turns to a gas, which means it boils like a mother fucker at -259 degrees Fahrenheit. That gives us thirty eight degrees of "bandwidth" to play with in our creation of life scenaroiio and all the width of life forces must occur or work within, a few degrees differencial.
If you look at water, it bis totally solid at any temperature below thirty two degrees Fahrenheit (OK, that's a lot higher and implies more movement/energy at the atomic level as well, but that's a different discussion, isn't it?) and yet it turns to liquid at that temperature plus one degree. At thirty three degrees fahrenhet it is a liquid, but - BUTT it remains in a liquid state, absorbing huge amounts of energy - more than seems possible (for god is water - HaHaa) until it reaches a temperature of two hundred twelve degrees Fahrenheit. There is a "breathing zone of " one hundred eighty degrees. No other compound, aside from a few metals, can claim such a wide range between liquid and gas, most especially when you compare the energies involved.
Those metals hardly take on any energy without changing drastically (look at the changes which metals suffer with wide spreads between temperatures on a constant basis.). Look how much energy water can take on and hardly change at all. Dont't forget that water is the one and only compound which is larger, bigger, takes up more space - (reduces its specific gravity - duh) as a solid, than when it is liquid.(you hadn't thought of how unique and important this property is in the workings of nature, have you. Ever seen a hillside collapse because it got wet, then cold, then thawed? Water is different, dude!!!) (look at the effectsa this has upon the environment ... or not. Maybe think of the difference in "size") between methane as a liquid and methane as a solid (... well before you take into account the energies involved, that is) Methane may support llife, but it will be a "shalllow" life, only possible within a very narrow range of possibilities.
Water has proven to support a massively varied range of life. Water, on the other hand is much wider/forgivable in its likelihoood to supposrt any life that we might be albe to recognize.
Heavy carbons ... what ever!
Look again.
You can learn from tables of simple data, if you are open. (You're right - I'm drunk, but I can do this again when i am sober and you mat learn something - something Holy, as the Indians say.)
Find me a compound with similar properties to water (I will talk about carbon, if you insist that you are ready - for Carbon is is far more intriguing - it has the capaapbility to be one thing at one pressure and a totally different thing, all atomic particles accounted, d for (that is) at another pressure. I'm not talking about JUST diamonds and coal, but ALL the various carbon compounds - carbon can be a true bitch ... if you watch her. Fuck! There is a lot to this stuff.!! Is there another who sees any of this?) and we will talk of alternate life possibilities when I am sober.
was it something I said?