• Question: Apart from earth, which planet would be most likely to have some form of life on it?

    Asked by nataliel to Amy, Grant, Martin, Shawn, Usman on 11 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by wifeys4life.
    • Photo: Martin Archer

      Martin Archer answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      In this solar system we have a couple of ideas where life could be lurking. Jupiter has icy moons, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. It’s thought that under their icy crusts there might actually be liquid water. The JUICE mission, which has only recently been given the go ahead, plans to send a satellite there to measure whether indeed there is liquid water and if it is potentially habitable. So that would be my best guess, but you never know. Life could be very different from other places than how we understand it on Earth. It’s exciting to think about though!

    • Photo: Amy Tyndall

      Amy Tyndall answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      There is one idea that life on Earth was kick-started by material being carried from outer space on lumps of rock that hit our planet millions of years ago. One meteorite recently found in Antarctica was discovered to have nitrogen in it – an element that forms a crucial part of the proteins and DNA that result in life as we know it… So if such a thing could have created life on Earth, I think the chances of the same thing having happened on another far-away planet are pretty high!

    • Photo: Grant Kennedy

      Grant Kennedy answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      Martin nailed some of the best places that are most favoured by scientists. Despite the Mars rovers finding good evidence of liquid water on Mars, they haven’t found any signs of life, yet. Another one in the Solar System that might have liquid water is Enceladus, which is a moon of Saturn.

      Of course the reason we that think liquid water is important is because it’s important to humans. We have no idea if other forms of life could exist that don’t need liquid water, so it might be that we discover a new form of life somewhere totally unexpected where there isn’t even water!

      g

      ps: if you haven’t seen the animation of how the newest Mars rover Curiosity landed on Mars you need to see it, totally nuts but it worked!

    • Photo: Shawn Domagal-Goldman

      Shawn Domagal-Goldman answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      I’d argue that the most likely place for life is a planet we haven’t even found yet! NASA’s Kepler mission is looking for planets that are the same size as Earth, and that get the amount of energy we get from the Sun. Once that missions finds such planets (I think it’s about to), those objects will be the most likely to have life. What’s even cooler is these planets could – in theory – have conditions in place that could support advanced forms of life, like us. To confirm that, we’ll need another mission to study the planets in more detail. But the possibilities will be pretty cool!

Comments

  • Photo: Shawn

    Shawn commented on :

    I also agree that inside the solar system, Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, and Mars are good places to look. Basically, liquid water is the key. You need water, I need water, my dog needs water, plants need water…. Every kind of life we know of needs water, and we find life just about everywhere we find water. And we think there might be water in those planets. Titan could also maybe have life on the surface swimming around in lakes made of natural gas… but that life would be really, REALLY weird and nothing like us at all. It would be so different that I’m not even sure we would have a good scientific test for it.