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Comment by crowbahr | Hacker News Reader

The question is can life arise in such an environment, or only migrate to one.

That's yet to be determined as far as I know: extremophiles have all evolved from less tolerant life forms as far as I'm aware.

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Though, of course, you might expect to see that, even if life can arise in extreme environments:

It's uncontroversial that life is much denser in more hospitable environments. If the extreme environments are in regular contact with the hospitable environments, and if evolution is sufficiently random, you would expect over time that most organisms anywhere have an ancestor in the hospitable environment.

Even if life can arise in the extreme environment.

What is the most hospitable environment? A tide pool? Also the most hospitable environment for genesis is likely different from the most hospitable environment for a complex ecosystem.

For life without photosynthesis, which takes a while to develop, some place with a lot of free chemical energy because the first replicators will be very inefficient. White and black smokers under the sea are usually put forward as candidates.

That's an additional good question that would complicate the simplistic model I suggested in my comment.

Live on earth might actually originate from geothermal vents at extreme (for us) conditions.

See the excellent book The Vital Question by Nick Lane.

One of the theories I heard recently was that life could arise anywhere there are energy gradients, conditions for forming bubbles and the right substrates. I'm not sure how accepted that is (heard it in a popsci lecture) but it seems plausible.

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