"Biologists have proposed the existence of a “shadow biosphere”—an undiscovered group of living things with biochemistry different from what we’re used to. Most of life’s diversity on our planet is too small to see, making microbes the most likely place to look for these new types of life. Already, new discoveries are shaking our beliefs about what life is. Recently discovered giant, amoeba-infecting viruses blur the line between life and nonlife—although they rely on their hosts for essential biological functions, the bacteria-sized viruses have complex genomes. Such unexpected discoveries suggest that we shouldn’t define what we are searching for by what we know is already out there, Orphan said."
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/02/shadow-biosphere-might-be-hiding-strange-life-right-under-our-noses?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=facebook
I think about this all the time! If we find life, it's almost definitely going to be something fundamentally outside of our experience. Like, if there are really other species out there developing the ability to travel through space, all of that is going to be so tremendously different - "culture", "society ",... It's sort of exciting to think about
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