• Question: Do you think there is life on other planets? Would you like to explore there?

    Asked by mommy123 to Edd, Jess, Zara on 23 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by ctree.
    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      I think there must be other planets with life forms out there simply because the universe is so vast that it is so unlikely that we are the only planet with conditions suitable for life. We may find life in our solar system – although it is likely to only be bacteria or small life forms like that.

      It is an interesting thing to think about – why have we not recieved any signals from any intelligent life – is it because there isn’t any or because they are ignoring us? There was a very big and expensive American project to look for life known as SETI (search for extra terrestrial intelligence). I think they cut a lot of funding but the project is still ongoing: http://www.seti.org/

      I am not sure I would like to explore far-away planets – I like Earth too much. But I’d definitely be interested to see what they find if we do go exploring into space!

    • Photo: Jessica Chu

      Jessica Chu answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Yeah I agree with Edd, it would not surprise me if one day..sort of like in movies – we find life out there in the universe. My friend who studies astro physics about the blackholes for the past 12 billion years said that if you hold a strand of you hair up against the sky.. that is how big our galaxy is in comparison to the universe!

    • Photo: Zara Gladman

      Zara Gladman answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Hi mommy123

      I think that there’s an excellent chance that there’s life on other planets… we’re such a tiny speck in the universe after all!

      Like Edd said, there may even be life in OUR solar system! Recently, life was discovered deep under the Earth’s crust – nematode worms! Here’s the story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13620701 This might not sound very exciting… but it is… because if we can find life deep underground on our planet, then there’s a chance it occurs on other plants too, like Mars (we just haven’t found it yet)!

      Would I like to explore there? I think it would depend on how long it took to get there… it would take years to reach another planet! So probably not – I’d rather spend those years exploring Earth! It’s quite big, after all! 🙂

Comments

  • Photo: Jen

    Jen commented on :

    I’d like to just add a bit to kinda answer what Edward said about not receiving signals from intelligent life. The best way that we currently think we can find other life is to look for radio signals, we assume that other intelligent life will communicate by radio like we have been doing for the last 100 years or so. This is what the SETI organisation that Edward linked to was trying to do. Our radio signals from TV etc will only have travelled 100 lightyears. When you consider that the disk of the Milky Way is 100,000 lightyears across, it hasn’t gone very far! And then you’ve got to wonder how much longer we’ll be communicating using radio signals. This doesn’t give us much of a window of opportunity to detect an intelligent civilisation!