• Question: is there any evidence to other lifw forms on other planets

    Asked by applepie7 to Amy, Grant, Martin, Shawn, Usman on 8 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Grant Kennedy

      Grant Kennedy answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      Sadly, not yet. We haven’t looked everywhere yet though. Europa and Enceladus, moons of Jupiter and Saturn, might have liquid water so are worth space missions to go look!

    • Photo: Martin Archer

      Martin Archer answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      So far the only life we’ve found is on Earth. But given how big the Universe is and how long it’s been around, I do think that there must be some sort of life elsewhere. The question is whether we’ll ever find it.

      We know Mars used to have flowing water, so maybe it used to have life. We’ve even found amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, in comets – so some of them may have life or at least the ingredients for it. And as Grant says, Jupiter’s icy moons (Ganymede & Europa) are thought to have liquid water under their icy crusts. The JUICE mission (which has only just been given the go ahead) will send a satellite there to work out whether that indeed is the case.

      You never know what we’ll find, life from other places may be very different to the way we understand life on Earth.

    • Photo: Shawn Domagal-Goldman

      Shawn Domagal-Goldman answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      There’s some evidence, but none of it is any good! For example, people have claimed to have found evidence for life in rocks from Mars and elsewhere in the solar system… BUT there are other explanations for those data and most scientists (including me) would tell you that those pieces of evidence are not convincing. There are things other than life that could have (and probably did) cause those features in the rocks.

      That’s a big part of science, especially when “big-picture questions” like alien life is involved. Evidence isn’t enough – you need to find really STRONG evidence. You also need to rule out other explanations.

      We also haven’t looked very much yet. One day we might be able to look for life on Mars or some moons around other planets, but first we have to know more about those planets.

      Eventually, I think our best bet will be looking for life on planets much farther away, beyond the edge of our solar system. Most of my work is spent trying to develop a telescope that could see those planets, and figure out if they had oceans, and continents… and life.

      We’re not going to launch any of these life-searching missions for years. That’s good news for you – it means you could be a scientist or engineer working on one of them!!! 😀

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