A discovery! do you think there could be life on other planets,?

Question

Lakes up to 60 miles long have been discovered on Saturn's giant moon Titan.

Dozens of well-defined dark patches are shown in radar images from the Cassini spacecraft, which flew past Titan on July 22. Scientists believe they are frigid lakes consisting of liquid methane, or a combination of methane and ethane.

The smallest are 0.6 miles wide, while others stretch for nearly 20 miles. The biggest lake seen was about 62 miles long - five times the length of Lake Windermere.

Dr Steve Wall, deputy radar team leader at the American space agency Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: "This is a big deal. We've now seen a place other than Earth where lakes are present."

Scientists had been hunting for Titan's lakes, which had been predicted but not detected until now.


Titan, the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere, is covered with dense smog, which makes surface features hard to see. Radar signals can penetrate through the clouds.

Answer 1

Yes. people have thought Titan was the best place for life to exist. It is very similar to Earth and also has and atmosphere. Titan is now the coldest place on the galaxy but it could have been warm millions of years ago. Scientists think that Titan was like Earth millions of years ago.

Answer 2

It seems unlikely we are alone in the galaxy.

Chemistry seems quite capable of creating the basic substances for life and as it is likely that there are billions of moons and planets to work with it seems likely SOME kind of life is out there.

However, the odds of intelligent life happening to be both currently alive (an not extinct by some means) and anywhere close enough for us to detect with even future technology seems pretty remote.

By some basic numbers

300 billion stars in our Galaxy
Assume half are old enough to have formed in the metal rich clouds to have life sustaining chemical reactions 150 billion
Assume half of these may have planets capable of supporting life 75 billion
Assume further that half of these worlds actually have life on them currently (it is relatively easy to generate mass extinction scenarios) 37.5 billion
Assume these life forms live on land and not in water (most life on earth is aquatic, and will never develop beyond most rudimentary technology without fire) Say 10% of previous number or 3.7 billion planets

Lots of life! Sounds promising so far?

Assume the collosal odds of evolution, chance, mass extinction survival, sufficient material wealth, species adaption to develop
technology. 1% of 3.7 billion or 37 million civilizations

Assume life expectancy of an average technological society at 1 million years? Why? just because. Humans have managed about 10 000 years, call me an optimist and we last for 1 million

Now how many technological civilizations are currently in the galaxy? If they have existed on and off for roughly half the age of the galaxy (7 billion years) 7 billion years divided by 37 million civilizations or 189 currently existing technological societies

Now what is the average distance between them?

Imagine the galaxy is a circle (it is not) approximately 300 000 light years across and sprinkle our 189 technological civilizations more or less evenly around it.

I come up with a ball park estimate of 1 civilization per 375 million "square" light years, or put another way, each technological alien civilization is no closer than 20 000 light years.

These numbers are far from scientific, but give an indication how rare extraterrestrial life is even to optimists like me.

If humanity survives a million years, we would be lucky to meet one!

Answer 3

With each discovery, it's looking better and better! Recently, one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus was discovered to have water geysers. And, as most scientists believe, liquid water is one the requirements for life anywhere near like that on Earth. But if you are limiting your question to our own solar system, then I guess Possibly and Hopefully, at least for microbial life.

However, if you are talking anywhere else in the universe, then the answer is almost certainly yes. It would be extremely unlikely that we would be alone in the universe with no other life anywhere. BUT, it's currently believed by many that even if there is life elsewhere in the universe, we would effectively be alone due to the insurmountable obstacles of communicating with other life via the immensely huge distances seperating us.

Answer 4

There are things thriving in places on Earth where we originally thought nothing could live. Viruses grow in Jet Airplane Turbines!!!!! Giant clams grow in poisonous sulfer vents in the depths of the ocean. Plants and animals thrive between layes of rock seven miles beneath the ground...

Life will always find a way to come into being, I think.

It would be most odd if life was only limited to Earth. Even odder if it wasn't a universal principle, a law yet inexpressed, that says chemical structure strives to a level of self replicating and ultimately aware existence.

I don't believe in God, per se... but I do believe that there is a universal tendancy toward life and consciousness.

Answer 5

Titan is too cold for life as we know it. And the lakes there are probably liquid methane (water is rock hard at those temperatures). Since liquid water is necessary for life as we know it, Titan is probably lifeless.

But keep looking. Maybe there is some planet out there like Earth around some other star.

Answer 6

Will you count bateria as life? If so then yes, bateria has been discovered on Mars rocks already.

If you only count intelligant beings as life, then no I do not believe there is life in our solor system other than Earth.

I will believe that intelligant life exists in distant solar systems. But I have no evidence to back that up, I'm simply playing the odds.

Answer 7

I think there could be, afterall this Universe is so huge that i find it hard to believe that our one planet can have life. Perhaps the life we find out there will not be like it is here but it'll still be something exciting to discover. But we'll only know when the Space program gets more support.

Answer 8

I believe that we are not alone in the vastness of sapce.
The universe is far to large for life to just have started here.
We may not find it on any of the other planets of moons of our solar system, buet we are well on the way.

Answer 9

of course there's life on other planets. whether it be single cell organanisms or big eyed martians. the universe is very vast place. research on this planet in which tiny organisms that live in some of the most extreme conditions shows that life on other planets is not just a possibility .

Answer 10

Of course there is life on other planets. Just because we haven't found it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There is no way we are the only life forms in the universe. It's statistically impossible.