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Since time immemorial life has been viewed as being fragile, yet over thepast few decades it has been found that many extreme environments are inhabitedby organisms known as extremophiles.Knowledge of their emergence, adaptability,and limitations seems to provide a guideline for the search ofextra-terrestrial life, since some extremophiles presumably can survive inextreme environments such as Mars, Europa, and Enceladus. Due tophysicochemical constraints, the first life necessarily came into existence atthe lower limit of lifes conceivable complexity.Thus, the first life could nothave been an extremophile, furthermore, since biological evolution occurs overtime, then the dual knowledge regarding what specific extremophiles are capableof, and to the analogue environment on extreme worlds, will not be sufficientas a search criterion.This is because, even though an extremophile can live inan extreme environment here-and-now, its ancestor however could not live inthat very same environment in the past, which means that no contemporaryextremophiles exist in that environment.Furthermore, a theoretical frameworkshould be able to predict whether extremophiles can be considered a special orgeneral case in the galaxy.Thus, a question is raised: does Earths continuousinhabitability represent an extreme or average value for planets? Thus,dependent on whether it is difficult or easy for worlds to maintain thisinhabitability, the search for extra-terrestrial life with a focus onextremophiles will either represent a search after dying worlds, or a searchafter special life on living worlds, where one focus too narrowly on extremevalues.

Extremophiles: a special or general case in the search for extra-terrestrial life?