do you think there is life on another planet ?

Answer 1

There could be but it might be no higher than basic plant life. Yet, with the uncountable number of stars and planets out there, there could well be.

The other answer is yes, but there's not much in Wigan.

Answer 2

Absolutely ! There are so many stars in the universe that even if only 0.1% of those had planets capable of harbouring life, there would be millions upon millions of planets with life on them. And that's just the relatively small bit of the universe we can see !

Whether or not we'll actually make contact with any other life forms is a different matter, although we've been broadcasting radio waves for over 60 years so if there's any life within 60 light-years they may have detected us by now !

There is also some purported evidence that aliens may have visited the Earth at some time in the past, i.e. ancient cave paintings of UFO like craft etc., but I think we should keep an open mind here !

Answer 3

If you mean "intelligent life" then I think it very unlikely.

Claims along the lines of "there must be a high probability because of the number of stars ... etc" are very unscientific.

Since at present we have only one example of life occurring (here on earth), we have no real way of constructing a probability.

Given all the other factors - age of the universe; type of sun; age of sun; distance from it; size of planet; type of orbit; amount of wobble; having a moon of the right size in the right orbit; the physical make-up of the planet; type of core; position and effect of other nearby planets; the length of time that the appropriate planet has existed in the appropriate position; avoiding impacts with other bodies; not to mention the very strict set of conditions which allowed life to form and mature here, etc, it is just possible that this is the only current example!

Until we have more evidence, I think we should err on the side of considering this occurrence unique and learn to behave in a manner fit for "intelligent life" before we completely screw up the planet we're living on. Just a thought.

Answer 4

If there are 100 billion Galaxies out there alone then the possibility of life on another planet has to be fact. If you deduced that there are 10 stars that have inner planets in all of these galaxies then at least 1 of them could harbour life. As for intelligent life then the possibilities must narrow down to 1 chance in every Galaxy. That is still a huge figure to calculate whether or not something is out there.

Answer 5

Quite possibly, but we don't know. It would have to be a Goldilocks planet (Not too warm, not to cold!) and from what we have observed of the universe so far, these would appear to be very, very rare.
Richard Dawkins did a very rough calculation, rounding everything up for simplification, and assumed that the odds of life arising and surviving were one in a billion. But that would mean that there were at least a billion planets in the universe that had life.
But those billion worlds would be scattered thinly. At the moment, we only know of one, the Earth. We could be all alone in the night!

That is one of the reasons it is important to look for traces of life on other planets in out system, like mars, or the moons of Jupiter. If life got a start twice in one system, then it could be quite common.
But at the moment, as I say, we just don't know!

Answer 6

Not in our solar system, however there are millions of other stars/suns, a percentage of which will have planetary systems and a further smaller percentage will have planetary systems similar to our own.

It would therefore be naive and arrogant to think that we are the only planet in the whole of the Cosmos where life could evolve.

So yes, I believe that somewhere out there in space is another, perhaps many, planet with life on it.

Answer 7

Possibly but it does depend on factors.

Life needs water to exists. If there is water on any planet then there could be bacteria etc..

Take Mars. There may be bacteria on Mars as there are very small volumes of water.

A moon of Jupiter is made from frozen methane and water and could possibly have life.

Its all a matter of time before we find out.

But i think there has to be life. The probibility that earth is the only planet in the universe that harbours life is extremely unlikely. There must be another planet of a similiar distance away from a star somewhere out there

Answer 8

WIth all the trillions of planets in our universe I think it is highly unlikely that we are alone. Your question didn not specify whether you meant just life--like a simple microbe in a sheet of ice maybe--or intelligent life like us. (well, some of us! LOL). But I'm assuming that you were referring to intelligent life, since that's what most people are interested in. I still think the answer is yes! Check out this thing called the Drake Equation; you can Google it. Basically, it says that, given the trillions of stars, if even a small fraction of those had planets, and even a small fraction of those had conditions able to support life, that there would still be billions of likely candidates!

Answer 9

Very much so! There are many species of animals on Earth that require different means of survival. Some are water bound, some like it hot, some cold, etc. There is no reason to believe that other species of life might exist elsewhere. It would be naive of us to think that with all the stars in our universe that another Earth-like planet doesn't exist.

Answer 10

Statistically, yes. There was an equation compiled of all the factors needed to support life, and it was calculated that the number of communicating civilisations there are (which is all we are interested in, as we could never go there) is approximately proportionate to the number of years a communicating civilisation lasts. So ours is about 50-100 years old... since we began sending out radio waves on a mass scale.
It's almost certain that there is life out there somewhere, but not on any of the planets in our solar system.