• Question: Do you believe that there is life on other planets? Why?

    Asked by ashahid to Mark, Ben, Jony, Katharine, Peter on 16 Nov 2011. This question was also asked by rache, explode786, lambk003, begua004.
    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 13 Nov 2011:

      Hi ashahid,

      I would have to say I do believe we will find life somewhere on other planets.

      There are 2 reasons for this, the fist is that although we have no conclusive proof of life on other planets, there is a good chance on 2 planets or moons in our solar system, and a possibility on about 5 or 6 others.

      the second is that there are lots of stars in the galaxy, and lots of galaxies in the universe, and we currently have a project to look at a tiny group of those stars to see if they have planets round them which could have life on them. In about 2 years of discovery it has confirmed 25 exo-planets (planets outside our solar system) and has identified about 1200 other possibilities.

      So thats why i think that the chance of there being life on other planets is very high 🙂

      Just to clarify though this means life as in microbes and not sentient life like us. However I suspect that there may well be other sentient life in the universe its just very unlikely that we would ever make contact or even notice them as the distances in space are just so large.

      Hope this answers your questions, and if your interested in more information i would recommend having a look at the Kepler website from NASA (All the NASA website is excellent and well worth a look 🙂 )

      http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html

      Mark

    • Photo: Jony Hudson

      Jony Hudson answered on 15 Nov 2011:

      Hmmm. Good question. But not one that i think I can answer scientifically! My gut feeling would be yes, I guess.

    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 15 Nov 2011:

      We are in a very special place on Earth but not one that I think is unique. When you think of the huge number of the stars in the Universe, even assuming a tiny likelihood that there might be an Earth like planet orbiting the stars there is still likely to be one. But the chance that they would be close enough to communicate with us is slim to none as Earth like planets would still be few and very far between.

    • Photo: Katharine Schofield

      Katharine Schofield answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      We don’t have any really hard evidence for it yet, but I don’t see why we should assume that there isn’t life elsewhere. The Universe is a big place and there are so many stars and planets out there that my gut feeling is that yes, it’s very probable that there is life on other planets – but how advanced those life-forms might be, I have no idea.

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