• Question: do you think there are other life forms on other planets

    Asked by Dylan to James, Miranda on 15 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Herp Derp.
    • Photo: James Gilbert

      James Gilbert answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      I think it’s really likely, yes. But sadly we haven’t found proof… yet.

      Our galaxy – the Milky Way – has over 100 billion stars in it. Our sun is just one of those stars. We now know that almost every one of those stars has at least one planet orbiting it! So you would think surely *somewhere* there is another place that life has evolved..? It seems very likely.

      Oh and our galaxy is just one of over 100 billion galaxies in the universe (and we don’t even know for sure how ‘big’ the universe is – we can’t see it all). That could mean at least 10000000000000000000000 planets!

    • Photo: Miranda Jackson

      Miranda Jackson answered on 22 Jun 2015:

      I believe that there is undoubtedly life on other planets in our galaxy, given that there are billions of stars in the galaxy planets are very likely to have formed around many of them.

      Some of the conditions that scientists believe are necessary for life to form on other planets are
      1. The planet must orbit the star in a “habitable zone” (the distance from the star where water is in liquid form) and be in a nearly circular orbit.
      2. The planet must be “rocky” (rather than gaseous) and massive enough to mantain an atmosphere.
      3. The planet should have a magnetic field to deflect harmful radiation from space.
      4. Some scientists believe that a moon keeps the planet spinning fast enough so that one side of the planet does not get scorched by the star while the other freezes.

      There are probably millions of planets in our Galaxy with these characteristics, so I believe that life exists on other planets, though on some planets it might be in the form of very simple single-celled organisms.

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