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Asked by elliot25 to Colm, Eoin, Joseph, Lauren, Stephen on 11 Nov 2013.
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Eoin O Colgain answered on 11 Nov 2013:
The Mars Rover found no trace of methane, so this is a set-back for the existence of Martians.
http://www.universetoday.com/104930/Now, on the positive side, we are discovering new exoplanets, ones outside our solar system everyday. Our galaxy has 100 billion stars. A lot of those will have earth-like planets. Outside our galaxy, there are another 100 billion galaxies to check.
It is almost a mathematical certainty life exists.
The only concern is that humanity will destroy the earth (global warming) before we have a chance to make it that far as a species. This would be a great shame and extremely short-sighted. Humanity should strive to find alien life.
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Lauren Mc Keown answered on 11 Nov 2013:
As of yet, we don’t know that, unfortunately! The search for life continues. Because exoplanets (planets not within our own Solar system) are quite far away, we can’t probe them as closely as we can probe the planets near Earth. So scientists are continuously looking for evidence that life may have existed on our neighbouring planets and their satellites in the past. A big area of interest at the moment is looking for evidence of the presence (or even past existence) of water. You know how the old saying goes – “where there’s water, there’s life” and so the existence of water could point to the conditions for even microbial life to exist or have existed in the past.
Recently, the Mars rover detected what appears to be alluvial fans, pointing to the past existence of rivers. On top of this, it found eroded rocks – which could only be formed through surface flow of water. Traces of water vapor were also found within these rocks which is pretty cool! As well as Mars, actual liquid water has been found on one of Saturn’s moons – Enceladus. This amazing moon actually shoots water for several kilometres from geysers beneath the surface so Cassini (the spacecraft which is currently looking at it) can probe the particles on this moon without even landing on it! Scientists think that Enceladus, despite being covered in solid ice, could have the conditions beneath its icy crust for the existence of extremophiles – organisms which can live in very extreme conditions. Apart from this amazing talent of being able to survive harsh conditions we couldn’t live in, extremophiles are not usually considered “intelligent” life-forms, though. As the search for water evidence on planets and their satellites is a huge area of interest of mine, I still think that if we found evidence of the existence of even these organisms, it would be an absolutely huge discovery which would be a massive advance in space science and I would probably be very excited and emotional if that happened :p Hope this addresses your question! 🙂
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Joseph Roche answered on 11 Nov 2013:
There is probably life out there but whether or not it is intelligent remains to be seen. Maybe they are so intelligent that they don’t want anything to do with us. We are not very good at looking after our own planet so we would not look very intelligent to anyone that might be watching.
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colm bracken answered on 11 Nov 2013:
There is an equation called Drake’s equation which tries to estimate the number of intelligent species in our galaxy. The equation is:
N = R* fp ne fl fi fc L
It looks complicated, but it really isn’t. Each symbol, for example fl, is just a fraction of the total number of stars in our galaxy. And N is the number we are interested in. The problem is that we don’t yet know the value of a lot of the fractions. However even the most modest guesses still leaves a large number but we still have not detected any signs of life yet. I have listed the explanations of each of the fractions below. Have a think about what values you would guess for each of them.• N = The number of communicative civilizations
• R* = The rate of formation of suitable stars (stars such as our Sun)
• fp = The fraction of those stars with planets. (Current evidence indicates that planetary systems may be common for stars like the Sun.)
• ne = The number of Earth-like worlds per planetary system
• fl = The fraction of those Earth-like planets where life actually develops
• fi = The fraction of life sites where intelligence develops
• fc = The fraction of communicative planets (those on which electromagnetic communications technology develops)
• L = The “lifetime” of communicating civilizations -
Stephen Scully answered on 15 Nov 2013:
Nothing that we have discovered. If there is any, then we have a much better chance at finding it now than ever before, as we are now able to find the planets that may support life. They will be a good place to start looking.
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