When you look at the night sky you see thousands of stars.?

Question

Each star is a sun millions of miles away.If every sun has as many planets around it as our sun is it possibe there is life out there some where. I would like to think so.How about you.

Answer 1

Given the number of stars with planets that we know of, I think extraterrestrial life is a near certainty. Now, that's just a hunch. If the data is out (which it is), there's no reason to believe it. So my hunch is no better than any wild beliefs people have.

Answer 2

First, not all of those "stars" are just stars. Some a lot of them are galaxies that have billions of stars within them.

Second, as you presume, it is almost a mathematical impossibility that there isn't some kind of life "out there, somewhere." But whether or not we'll be able to find it is rather problematic.

Life doesn't exist forever on a planet. Life on Earth has only been around for a short period. At the rate we're going, we probably won't exist forever. Civilizations start and end. Over the time the universe has been around, it's conceivable that lots of civilizations could have risen and died. Planets undergo extreme climactic changes. The star they orbit goes nova. The galaxy gets hit by another. Or the inhabitants could do like we're doing pollute, develop, populate themselves out of existence.

Let's say a star 100,000 light years away has or had a planet orbiting it that is identical to Earth; 75% covered by water perhaps a moon or so, teeming with carbon-based life.And let's say technology is developed enough to detect planets with potential for supporting life. By the time they discover Earth about 100,000 years will have elapsed.

While the capability of Earth to support life probably existed back then, we were incapable of sending or receiving any signals... or even indicating our existence. So the distant scientists could only speculate. Perhaps 100,000 years ago they sent a signal. Our ability to receive that signal is in question, but suppose we could receive it... today. Because we don't know how to send information faster than the speed of light, it'll be another 100,000 years or so before they get our response. Will the still exist then? Will we?

But there's no guarantee that another civilization cares if we're here. There's no guarantee that another civilization is as inquisitive as we are. There's no guarantee that another civilization is even humanoid. We might not even be able to recognize extraterrestrial life if we ran into it. We might not recognize it as intelligent.

Answer 3

With the unaided eye, on a clear night when you look up into the sky, almost everything that you see is within the Milky Way Galaxy. It is estimated that within the Milky Way there are more than 200 Billion stars. Each of those stars has the potential of having from 0 to 10 (or more) planets with their associated moons orbiting that star. Some stars are found to be binary (two stars rapidly circling each other), some are trinary (three stars rapidly circling each other) and a few others come in clusters. While it has never been written up in various astronomical texts that I can recall, I do not feel that orbiting solar systems will be found around binary, trinary, or clusters of stars because of the confused and varying influences of gravity on orbiting objects. I think that the confused pull of pulsating gravity would have sucked (pulled) any nearby objects into the center of the group.

Outside of the Milky Way Galaxy there are thousands and thousands of other galaxies and each one of them may contain billions and billions of additional stars. Each one of those stars could have from 0 to 10 (or more) orbiting planets with their associated moons orbiting that star.

With so many possible distant solar systems, it is entirely possible that there is life on distant planets. It is also entirely possible that life on some distant planet may have evolved and then been wiped out in the same way that dinosaurs were wiped off of the face of the Earth long ago by some terrible event such as the impact of a huge asteroid when it struck the Earth. Looking at it another way, life on this planet took a very long time to evolve. On the distant planet where you expect to find life forms, life could just now be evolving, but be nowhere near to the stage of technological advanced human life that we have here on Earth. Humans are just one form of life among hundreds of thousands of life forms here on Earth. The dominant species on some distant planet might have become truly intelligent fish, or birds. Powerfull insects or reptiles are also a good possibility due to the large quantity of species known here on Earth, as an example. The actual likelihood of finding intellignet "human equals" is rather slim.

The most interesting factor to consider is how would you determine that there are live mammals, insects, reptiles, birds or fish on a distant planet from a distance of 100 or 1000 Light Years Distant? That will be the question of the century for all outer space observers.

Answer 4

The Drake equation figures there must be a million intelligent civilizations out there but it doesn't take into account time. Some theorists believe that intelligent civilizations inevitably destroy themselves, just as we are doing. We just happen to be existing in a time where no other beings capable of radio astronomy exist right now. There may have been in the past and there likely will be in the future but right now it seems we're alone. Keep in mind though, that the likelihood of life of any sort is pretty high provided the planet is in a stable orbit and has liquid water.

Answer 5

This is answered by something called "The Drake Equation"

The Drake equation states that: N=R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L

where:

N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy, with which we might hope to be able to communicate;
and
R* is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

When Dr. Drake entered his data, it came out like this:
R* = 10/year (10 stars formed per year, on the average over the life of the galaxy)
fp = 0.5 (half of all stars formed will have planets)
ne = 2 (2 planets per star will be able to develop life)
fl = 1 (100% of the planets will develop life)
fi = 0.01 (1% of which will be intelligent life)
fc = 0.01 (1% of which will be able to communicate)
L = 10,000 years (which will last 10,000 years)
Drake's values give N = 10 × 0.5 × 2 × 1 × 0.01 × 0.01 × 10,000 = 10 civiliations currently in the galaxy.

Complicated huh? Let's put it simply like this, there are a wide variety of factors, proper star formation, habitable planet, the right amount of ... which means there is a lot of guess work for this.

Most scientists agree however with this sentance: "If we are alone in the universe, it is a whole lot of wasted space."

Answer 6

I honestly believe there is. Why should we be the only 'ones'?
Think about how immeasurably vast it is out there. There just has to be some other life form out there somewhere. The problem is it's located so many hundreds of millions of miles away, the chances of us EVER finding it (or it finding us) are absolutely miniscule.
Put it this way, nobody can say for certain there is no life-form away from the planet we inhabit.
There's some life somewhere else, but we certainly won't be making contact with it during my lifetime! But think of the amazing day when mankind DOES reach it somehow...

Answer 7

The average distance between stars in our galaxy is significantly greater than "millions of miles". It is approximated often as 5 light years, each light year being 6 Trillion miles for a total average distance of 30 Trillion miles.

One trillion is 30 million times larger than a million.

Sure, we can all hope there is life out there that could help us with our problems, but it seems a super long time into the future before we can even communicate with any of it.

Answer 8

Of course there is darling. And dont forget there are not thousands of stars, there are billions of stars just in our own little galaxy we so lovingly call the milky way. Then of course there are billions of other galaxies all with billions of stars. Forget them being millions of miles away, they are light years away. And lots of those stars have planets and some of them have life. So don't worry we are not alone. Kiss Kiss from dimblonde

Answer 9

How about me?

I think yahooanswers need to seperate their catagories further or maybe open a chat room for questions like this that get asked on a daily basis. Check the search bar. Life Outside Earth...313...one of those should have your answer.

http://suggestions.yahoo.com/detail/?prop=answers&fid=38957

Answer 10

Yes I believe its highly possible, and I also think it would be a waste if we were the only beings in the universe that can appreciate that awesome sight too. It seems lately people are more open to the idea, and its nice to believe it without being viewed as a crank.