Do you believe in life on other planets? Why?

Answer 1

Life evolved on earth very very quickly. Almost as soon as the asteroids quit falling the oceans were filled with prokaryotes. However complex life, the eukaryotes, which are at least 10 thousand times more complex than the prokaryotes took around 3 more billion years to develop. During the Cambrian explosion multicelled life suddenly exploded. My feeling is that simple life is common and will be found practically anywhere on worlds in the stars continuously habitable zone. Multicelled life is probably VERY rare. Fermi's Paradox suggests that an alien civilization should be able to colonize the entire galaxy in under 10 MY. Aliens aren't here. The skies are silent. The odds against intelligence are absurdly high. Intelligent life is probably restricted to only one planet: Earth.

Answer 2

Yes. Let's suppose that the chance of life forming (however advanced) is 1 in 10^n. For there to be a 50% chance that at least one planet has life, there would need to be 0.69/Log[1- 10^(-n)] planets with suitable conditions. For a 1 in a trillion chance, that's 700,000,000,000 planets. Considering how vast the universe is, that number doesn't seem too unlikely.

Answer 3

Yes, I do believe it could be true, after all, isn't it arrogant for us to think that we are the only living thing in this whole big universe?
We are looking for signs of life right now, but I believe that we are looking for "life as we know it" and in reality, life could take forms on other planets that we have no clue about or are testing for. I mean, what if they are not carbon based like we are? What if they don't drink water but something else to sustain them. It is possible.

Answer 4

As has been said by others, the probability is yes but just as our own sun will die eventually taking away life on Earth, perhaps other planets have had civilisations which have evolved but then died.
Carolyn Porco is a planetary scientist whose team is analysing images sent back by Cassini is looking for water on other planets and she thinks they have found it!!!
Join SETI to let your pc analyse sounds from space.
Have a look at the excellent explanation by the late Carl Sagan

Answer 5

according to the Darwinian theory, life evolves from simple organisms, and if we evolved other life forms can too, on distant stars/planets. It may be too far to reach in a lifetime, but there has to be other intelligent beings - there aren't many here on Earth! As Carl Sagan pointed out, "If we're the only ones in the vastness of space, seems like a waste of space."

Answer 6

I think that it is very possible that there is life on other planets. We and the Earth are relatively small, and time and space makes contact very unlikely. But I like to think that we are not alone! If scientists can recreate life from scratch, or a virus is found on a meteorite, et cetera -- that would be encouraging.

Answer 7

Yes, there are far too many other planets, solar systems, etc, out there for us to be the only planet with intelligent life.

Answer 8

Hi. Living organisms, yes. Intelligent life, possibly. On this planet life formed in any environment that it was suited for. Why not?

Answer 9

I think there is life on other planets because I hope that somewhere in this universe there should be a good example of reasonably intelligent life that has learned to make good use of the planet that they live on ....unlike us!!! Maybe some of them will come here and rescue us from ourselves someday...

Answer 10

It is a distinct possibility with billions of stars, each one possibly having a planetary system and if only a small number of those could support life you would still have thousands of possibilities. So odds are we are not alone we just don't have the technology to reach out.