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Asked by to Nat, Nate, Roberto, Sam, Sarah on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Roberto Trotta answered on 17 Jun 2014:
If we discovered life on another planet, nothing much would change in practice I don’t think — there wouldn’t be any immediate action. But it would be huge change in our perspectives on the Universe!
To know that Earth is not the only planet that harbours life would be one of the biggest discovery in history. It would definitely change the way we perceive ourselves, and our own significance.
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Sarah Casewell answered on 17 Jun 2014:
If we discovered life on another planet, we still wouldn’t be able to travel there as we can’t travel efficiently around our own solar system yet. It would change the world though – the knowledge that we are not alone in the universe is a huge thought.
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Sam Connolly answered on 17 Jun 2014:
It depends where it is, and what kind of life we find and where it is.
For example, there are a few places in our Solar system where life might be able to exist, the main one being in a huge ocean thought to be underneath the ice that makes up the surface of Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. If we find it there (there are plans to send a robot to try and find out), then we would potentially be able to reach it in the relatively near future (though at the moment it would take five or ten years to get there), so we could directly study it. If we did find it, it might just be something microscopic, similar to bacteria – which would be very interesting on it’s own, because it would show us that life can exist in places other than on Earth, so it’s likely to exist elsewhere outside our solar system. If it was something more complicated, like something similar to fish, biologists could study how they live and how similar life there is to life on Earth, and learn about the range of types of places we might find life on other planets. If it’s a fully blown civilisation of fish-people who live under the ice but have never realised that anything exists above it, we would have a whole new species of intelligent beings to communicate with and learn from each other!
If we find signs of life on far off planets (which is a lot harder to do), as Sarah says we have no way of getting there at the moment – even the closest stars would take thousands of years to reach with current technology. The only way it could affect us soon would be if there were intelligent life capable of communicating with us by radio waves, or something similar. It could still take a long time to talk to them, because even light takes years to reach other stars, but it would at least be possible. And if the civilisation we found did have the technology to travel quickly between stars, maybe we would meet them sooner than we think!
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Natasha Stephen answered on 18 Jun 2014:
Finding life elsewhere in our solar system, or beyond, would greatly change our understanding of the universe around us! At the moment, we consider Earth to be the “Goldilocks Planet”; not too hot, not too cold, it’s just right for life to exist. This is because Earth sits in what we call the ‘circumstellar habitable zone’, also known as the ‘Goldilocks zone’ where all conditions are just right; we are far enough away from the sun to be cool, unlike Mercury and Venus, but not far enough away to be really cold like the gas giants. We are lucky to have a ‘just right’ atmosphere of mainly nitrogen with oxygen that is required for life (as we know it) to respire, i.e. breathe. On Mars, the atmosphere is mainly carbon dioxide, similar to Mercury and Venus with added sulphur dioxide too – all of which would be poisonous to life. We also have liquid water on Earth, which doesn’t exist anywhere else and again is essential for life (as we know and understand it) to exist.
If we were to find life elsewhere in the solar system, or outside of it, that didn’t require the same conditions that life on Earth does, that would be mind-blowing! It would also be hugely important as there are international treaties agreed upon between the big nations involved in space exploration (i.e. NASA, ESA, JAXA, CSA etc. in collaboration with Russia) that if we were to find signs of life anywhere else in space, we are n0t allowed to disturb it! It’s called the “Planetary Protection Act” and it means we have to be careful not to contaminate any sort of alien life as well as not contaminate Earth with anything from another world!
It’s all very Sci-Fi but exciting!
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