Astronomy / Space Life in our Solar System

kmw

kmw
Juniper said:
Possible, but unlikely. They're pretty thorough about that kind of thing. :)
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Well, maybe but I remember watching the Apollo 11 crew making their way to their ship prior to launch:

http://www.apogeespacebooks.com/Titles Pics/FINALS/ap11crew.jpg

They walked in open air, anything could hitch a ride and no one would know. I don't suppose today's un-manned projects are any more scrupulous, or do they somehow sterilize, boil, burn, isolate every single component until it exits our atmosphere? I don't think so.
So, just supposing one of our miniscule bacterium is tougher than we know...... :)
 

Wulf

Wulf
Microbial life is likely everywhere in the universe it can be. It's pretty much everywhere on earth, even in the most extreme environments.

We already know that meteorites can be blasted off bodies and travel around our solar system. It's not impossible that life has hitched a ride on these. With this in mind, I don't think we should be too worried about microbes from our probs getting to other worlds. The only exception to this would be when we're looking at pristine environments. Examples on earth would be Lake Vostok and in space the supposed oceans under the ice on Europa and Enceladus.
 

Giskard

Giskard
Perseus said:
My money is on life being everywhere the Universe is. :)
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Does that mean that life existing solely on Earth would qualify your statement?

I do hope that life exists outside of our Solar System. Though my opinion is that intelligent life is exceptionally rare. Perhaps only one or two examples in our galaxy.
 

Orbitalai

Orbitalai
Giskard said:
Though my opinion is that intelligent life is exceptionally rare. Perhaps only one or two examples in our galaxy.
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Well, think about how long it took to develop life that could walk on land and fly and that stuff. Intelligence as I understand it was a very fast development compared.

I think 10.000+ lifeforms having reached our stage of intelligence is fairly likely. Not that all should have survived till now though, but then again some fade away, some rise.
 

Giskard

Giskard
Juniper said:
Here's a fun link instead of arguing about how much life is out there.

http://www.classbrain.com/artmovies/publish/article_50.shtml

Basically it puts values (you choose) onto the Drake Equation, which is the accepted way of speculating about life elsewhere in our galaxy.
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Oh dear. I played with the Drake Equation and the calculated answer it gave me was 0.00396

I say 'oh dear', but I do think there might, might be one other advanced technological civilisation in our Galaxy.
 

Juniper

Juniper
Star systems. Idea being that not every star system is suitable for hosting planets, or therefore life. Some stars live fast, burn hot, and die young - not enough time for planets or life to develop.
 

dannysquid

dannysquid
Wulf said:
Microbial life is likely everywhere in the universe it can be. It's pretty much everywhere on earth, even in the most extreme environments.
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The snag is that life was only created ONCE on Earth... as far as we know. Everything alive on Earth today seems to be evolved from that one moment. there seems to be one origin. Which implies it's a very unlikely thing.

Still, I have my fingers crossed they might find something tantalising on Mars.

And when it comes to intelligent life (the sort that drives cars, plays computer games, writes operas etc...) that only seems to have happened once too. There are millions of species on Earth and we're the only ones that make spaghetti, read newspapers etc.. Human-like intelligence doesn't seem particularly inevitable either.

Perhaps there are other sorts of intelligence. But asking if there are aliens with human-like behaviour seems weirdly specific to me. Like asking if there are ducks on other planets or speculating that the universe is filled with space beavers. :smilie:
 

Juniper

Juniper
dannysquid said:
The snag is that life was only created ONCE on Earth... as far as we know. Everything alive on Earth today seems to be evolved from that one moment. there seems to be one origin. Which implies it's a very unlikely thing.
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Not neccessarily - there is a theory called "panspermia" which says that life was actually carried to Earth from elsewhere, and grew from that. Given how many organics are found elsewhere in the solar system, it's not that far out an idea. The universe may be literally teeming with life, formed in the death of stars and carrying it all over the place where sometimes it finds an environment where it can flourish. :)

dannysquid said:
And when it comes to intelligent life (the sort that drives cars, plays computer games, writes operas etc...) that only seems to have happened once too. There are millions of species on Earth and we're the only ones that make spaghetti, read newspapers etc.. Human-like intelligence doesn't seem particularly inevitable either.
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Douglas Adams said:
“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
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:)

dannysquid said:
Perhaps there are other sorts of intelligence. But asking if there are aliens with human-like behaviour seems weirdly specific to me. Like asking if there are ducks on other planets or speculating that the universe is filled with space beavers. :smilie:
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No. Ferrets. ;)
 

dannysquid

dannysquid
Juniper said:
Not neccessarily - there is a theory called "panspermia" which says that life was actually carried to Earth from elsewhere, and grew from that. Given how many organics are found elsewhere in the solar system, it's not that far out an idea. The universe may be literally teeming with life, formed in the death of stars and carrying it all over the place where sometimes it finds an environment where it can flourish. :)
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I really like panspermia as an idea, and there's some evidence for it (more than I thought after a wikipedia rummage!) and I suppose it could suggest a common form of DNA throughout the universe. Which would put beavers back on the table.

Whichever way you look at it -- we're completely alone or the universe is teeming with beavers and ferrets -- it seems incredibly unlikely. But we only have to find one piddling alien life form in our own star system and the odds change completely. Fingers crossed!
 

PacalB

PacalB
I'm hedging my bets that we will find life peppered all over the solar system once we really get out and about. Look about Earth, life doesn't do things in 'ones'. Not only this, if we look about the planet, we find historical evidence that life has been smacked to just about nothing a number of times and within relatively short period of times bounced back time and time again.

Kepler and other telescopes have been looking at relatively small areas of our galaxy and everywhere we look we've found planet upon planet within these stellar systems. If we find life, even microbial life in other parts of our solar system then life throughout the rest of the galaxy and other galaxies is virtually guaranteed. Life will be just a byproduct of the way matter works.

We also know that nebulae are breeding grounds for complex organic molecules. So the base for life is already in place before stellar systems even start to form. No, the universe doesn't do things in "ones".
 

Bungarus

Bungarus
I saw a TV documentary about Europa where a scientist said there would not be enough energy to sustain life forms more complex or bigger than bacteria.

But I doubt that somehow; if there is enough energy for a few billion bacteria it might also be enough for a few million bigger creatures (who could harvest the bacteria for energy).
 

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
Under the surface, there is life in the hell of Mercury.

4161562.png
 

PacalB

PacalB
Bungarus said:
I saw a TV documentary about Europa where a scientist said there would not be enough energy to sustain life forms more complex or bigger than bacteria.

But I doubt that somehow; if there is enough energy for a few billion bacteria it might also be enough for a few million bigger creatures (who could harvest the bacteria for energy).
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I think you maybe be right with that last bit there. In fact hydrothermal plumes on Europa show that there are some amazing energy interactions going on. I don't know where those scientists on that TV doc were getting their information from but thats definately not what Cassini is seeing.

Further reading hydrothermal plumes: http://www-paoc.mit.edu/paoc/papers/europa_plume.pdf
 

Thargon

Thargon
Giskard said:
Oh dear. I played with the Drake Equation and the calculated answer it gave me was 0.00396

I say 'oh dear', but I do think there might, might be one other advanced technological civilisation in our Galaxy.
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How do we know the Drake equation wasn't created by some Alien inspired mathematician to cloak the fact that there are thousands of them living in the galaxy, and we are so insignificant at the moment that they feel the need to hide from us? Hmm my reasoning doesn't work!

Anyway, who says the Drake equation is accurate anyway? I understand some statistics, but it's entirely possible that the equation itself is not accurate, but I guess it's the best that can be done with our current level of knowledge.
 
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