Why do scientists assume that the conditions for life have to be as they are here?
Good point.
Personally I’m almost hoping we don’t find life. In reality it would bring us to a dead stop. If we do find life, it better be damned primative if we are to have any chance of going near it.
Robert Forward’s “Saturn Rukh” lays out a pretty likely scenario of what would likely happen if we were to find intelligent life.
We need life we can eat, air we can breath, and water we can drink
I think many of them don't. When Ballard discovered the abundance of life in the immediate vicinity surrounding the black-smokers on the ocean floor, most scientist began to rethink their understanding of life, and broadened their of the kinds of environments that will support life - whatever that really is.
I've heard Neal Degrasse Tyson say that he believes that we probably can't begin to comprehend or imagine the kinds of life that exists outside our own planet.