how far does space go and is there lifeforms on other planets?

Answer 1

they found pyramids on mars and a strange human looking face on the surface, but apparently its only natural?

see:http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast24may_1.htm for the face or: http://www.mt.net/~watcher/pyramid.html for the pyramids.

yes i agree, space is not infinite, since the universe is like an expanding balloon, its expanding from nothing into nothing, if you imagine walking in a straight line across the earth (perfectly straight) then you would eventually come back to the place you started. you have to imagine the universe is like a sphere but you can go into the sphere or jump off it only live on the surface. that's why we cannot reach the centre of the universe because a sphere has no centre! the reason we could not sent out a beam of light and wait is because it's such a vast distance that by the time the light reached us we would have move , and the universe is expanding + it would take billions of years

Answer 2

Space is by definition infinite. There is sone debate about how far out matter/energy has gone, it looks like there is an edge to the universe(the space where there is matter or energy) and that it is expanding.

We have no evidence that there is life on any planet other than Earth. A key component of logic is that lack of evidence is never evidence of lack, so we cannot say there is no extraterrestrial life until we have visited every planet in the universe, which is essentially immpossible. We will never know until we find some.

Answer 3

How far does space go? How long is a piece of string? The visible Universe is perhaps 13.7 thousand million light years in radius but there is no particular reason to expect that the Universe is only that big. It might be billions of times larger.

There are thousands of millions of galaxies in the visible universe and thousands of millions of stars in each galaxy. Recently more than 130 planets have been found orbiting nearby stars (within a few dozen light years) so planets are fairly common. Some of them will be like the Earth. So there could be tens of millions of Earth-like planets in the visible Universe

Though the formation of self-replicating strings of nucleotides or amino acids may seem unlikely, there are more than 6 times 10 to the 23rd power amino acid molecules in about 120 grams of mixed amino acids. That's half the weight of the coffee in an ordinary cup. If you assemble them at random, say fifty or a hundred at a time, you get active proteins immediately.

This probably happened on Earth for tens of millions of years after heavy meteorite bombardment stopped about 4000 million years ago. Since there is life on Earth there is probably life of some kind on other Earth-like planets even if it is only like bacteria. Most of the life on Earth is bacteria anyway.

Answer 4

COMMENTS ON OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS

The "canals" on Mars are no longer (since the the first flyby of Mars by Mariner 4 in 1965) believed to be canals of liquid water and proof of a civilisation. Mars has the highest known mountain, Olympus Mons, in the Solar System, but it is not a pyramid.

We haven't landed on Jupiter so how does Dr Pratt know about fossils there? The fact that sound waves have not come back YET doesn't mean they won't come back eventually, and as sound travels far far slower than light, and needs a medium not a vacuum to travel through, I am not sure what that is supposed to prove anyway.

If an astronaut shouts from his craft with the airlock open, and doesn't hear an echo, does that prove space is infinite?

Ken E and Mark G both make the error of assuming the universe cannot be more light years across than it is years old, but they forget that space is expanding and has been ever since the big bang, so the physical size of the observable universe is somewhat bigger than they suggest. Hubble's Law as applied to the recession of very distant quasars should demonstrate this.

YOUR FIRST QUESTION

The observable universe is estimated to be 156 billion light years across (in diameter). What lies beyond that boundary is unknown because it is unobservable. There may or may not be something. If there is something, it may or may not be infinite. But we have no way of telling, one way or the other. So it is simply speculation or a statement of faith that it is infinite. I would call it facile pseudo-science and there is too much of that about...

YOUR SECOND QUESTION

You are not the first to conceive of this possibility! It has usually been greeted sceptically or with hostility

The possibility of life on other planets was suggested by Democritus who lived from 450 - 370 BC, Democritus was the first philosopher we know who realized that the celestial body we perceive as the Milky Way is formed from the light of distant stars.

Democritus was among the first to propose that the universe contains many worlds, some of them inhabited:

"In some worlds there is no Sun and Moon, in others they are larger than in our world, and in others more numerous. In some parts there are more worlds, in others fewer (...); in some parts they are arising, in others failing. There are some worlds devoid of living creatures or plants or any moisture."

He also developed the idea that matter was made up of very small particles he called atoms. So he was a man way ahead of his time.

Aristotle and other Greek philosphers poured scorn on Democritus' ideas,

Giordano Bruno, an Italian astronomer and contemporary of Galileo, developed similar ideas in the 16th Century: in the wake of Copernicus' idea that the earth and the planets went around the sun, he suggested that other stars might have planets revolving around them and that some of those planets might harbour life, The Roman Catholic Church demanded he recant these heresies, and when he would not do so, they burned him at the stake in 1600.

Bruno has been proved right in his first suggestion. Since 1992 we have found 200+ extra-solar planets orbiting 170+ stars, and some of these stars are quite close to us: Epsilon Eridani, Tau Ceti and Gliese 876 are respectively 10, 11 and 15 light years away.

Astrobiologists are now working hard on his second suggestion that some of these planets may have life on them. They have developed the idea of a habitable zone, one in which it is warm enough for water to be a liquid (not ice) as water is vital to the development of micro-organisms, and in which harmful radiation doesn't exist or is screened out. Planets in the habitable zone will be more likely to harbour life.

But we haven't found it yet, The presence of water-ice on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, found in July 2006, and also on Europa, Jupiter's 4th largest moon may perhaps mean there is (or was) life in our own Solar System.

Watch this space!

Answer 5

Sorry to disappoint everybody but space isn't infinite. The boundary should be about 14.5 billion light years away! give or take a few billion.

As far as life goes, it's likely that there is life out there somewhere - you just need to solve Drake's Equation to see that, but Intelligent life, will that's a different matter. However there are 100 billion stars in the galaxy and about 100 billion galaxies so I don't see any reason for there not to be other intelligent life, but it might be very rare indeed.

Answer 6

Do you think there are aliens here on Yahoo answers? Who do you think would actually know the answers to these questions? Are there life forms on other planets? Not on the planets in our solar system, but there must be quadrillions of planets in the universe. Do you feel that we, as humans, are so special that we would be the only beings in the universe? Don't you hate it when people answer questions with more questions?

Answer 7

Space is as large as our universe. The light wave that has been travelling outward from shortly after the big bang is the edge of the Universe - thats as far as space goes or can go.

There are undoubtedly life forms on other planets, its a statistical certainty.

Answer 8

Experiments have proven that space is of infinite size as sound waves that have been sent out never returned. There has been fossil findings on planet jupiter that suggest possible life, whether or not life does exist in other planet is anybodys guess.

Hope this helps :-)

Dr Pratt.

Answer 9

I'v got no idea how far space extends but there must be life on other planet's,that's where my wife come's from.

Answer 10

Space is infinite and there are much larger, stronger, more intelligent life forms on other planets working their way towards you.