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Asked by 477smgd54 to Abbey, Pete, Natalie, Keith, Aaron on 12 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by Leonard hofstader, reece and andres, ben lad, wiktor_wochna.
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Aaron Boardley answered on 12 Nov 2015:
The short answer is: we don’t know.
There are millions of planets out there, so there’s plenty of places life could be! Remember, life can take many forms. Trees are alive, bacteria are alive, algae is alive, microscopic amoeba is alive. Often when we think of life on other planets we think of tall green aliens with faces and arms and legs, but if we find life on other planets then it could simply be in the form of microscopic creatures (which would still be an incredible discovery!), or something else unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. We’ll have to wait and see.
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Natalie Garrett answered on 13 Nov 2015:
If you look at it from a number perspective, there are just so many planets in the universe that it seems rather unlikely that there isn’t life somewhere else. If it happened here, why not somewhere else?
To answer this question, there are lots of people looking for life on other planets. These astrophysicists look for signatures of chemicals that are like fingerprints of life. If they find a planet that looks like it’s got living stuff on it, one day we may be able to send a probe there to find out. The only down side is that space is so staggeringly huge that we are not likely to find out in a number of generations of humans whether or not there is life elsewhere in the universe. But this doesn’t stop us from looking for it!
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