• Question: How many of you believe alien life exists, even if it is microbacterial?

    Asked by mrsheepy to Adam, Alexander, Aron, Jess, Neil on 7 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by lewisbrown, skippy, aholmes69, anyalouise13, popsicals66.
    • Photo: Aron Kisdi

      Aron Kisdi answered on 7 Mar 2014:

      I do. The universe is vast it would be a very boring place indeed without life elsewhere. We might even find life in our solar system, underground on Mars or on the moons of Jupiter.
      Also we starting to have missions that can observe Exoplanets, for example the Kepler Space Telescope launched in 2009. Exoplanets are planets around other stars. I think there is a good chance that in the next few decades we can confirm at least the existence of life elsewhere even if we won’t be able to see a picture of it directly.

    • Photo: Neil Bowles

      Neil Bowles answered on 7 Mar 2014:

      Yep, big Universe with lots of planets out there. Finding it is tricky, but there are lots of people designing experiments and instruments to try.

      In our Solar system, thats an interesting question that maybe the ExoMars mission will help answer in 2016 from orbit or 2018 when the European rover lands.

    • Photo: Jessica Marshall

      Jessica Marshall answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      I think the probability is that it does! Just think – there are more stars in the Universe than there are grains of sand on the Earth! And most of those have at least planet orbiting them! What we need to understand is how solar systems form and where we might expect to find other life in order to work out what and how to look for it. We also need to look in our own Solar System – Mars has many caves shielded from the Sun, Europa looks like it has a huge amount of liquid water under the icy surface. There are lots of places to look!

    • Photo: Alexander Finch

      Alexander Finch answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      I think that, somewhere, there is something life-like. Whether or not it is microbacterial, like something else on Earth or something even more strange… no one can say. We’re hopeful, of course – this is why we are looking with the Mars rovers and the SETI program 🙂

      One of my favourite quotes of all time was by space scientist and author Arthur Clarke, who said: “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”. I personally would change the last word to “incredible” or something – but no matter what, the Universe will surprise us…

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