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Asked by anon-186289 to Verity, Trystan, Raquel, Danny, Catherine, Andy on 11 Nov 2018.
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Danny Ward answered on 11 Nov 2018:
Given the size of the universe, I think its probable that there is other life out there. The problem is, the universe is an estimated 93 billion light years or 880000000000000000000000000 meters in diameter (and this is just the observable universe, it probably goes on beyond this). In this huge space, their are an estimated 3 trillion planets 🌌🌍.
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Trying to explore all of that to search for life is just an impossible challenge for us right now, we don’t have the technology to travel far enough. The furthest we have ever gone in space is with the voyager satellite (in space right now!) and that has reached 21200000000000 meters which we sent off 40 years ago. Still no signs of alien life yet but lots of promising planets to explore that look like they might contain life. If we did find life it would likely be a simple microbial organism at first 👽.
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Trystan Leng answered on 12 Nov 2018:
The universe is a big place! I think it is certainly likely. The question really comes down to how likely is it for life to evolve spontaneously, and we don’t really know the answer to this yet!
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Verity Hill answered on 12 Nov 2018:
I would be super surprised if there was no life anywhere else in the universe! The question is, is there complex life? The event that means that we can have multiple cells (the formation of a cell with a mitochondria) only happened once on earth (we think!). So even if we found an identical earth, it might not have humans on it. I think there are really likely to be lil microbes though!
Also we might have to look for life that doesn’t look like ours. All of our molecules are based on carbon, but other types of life might not be – they might be silicon based for example. This might make life harder to recognise for us, but we should still look! They should all still evolve in the same way so maybe that will help us!
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