Life Elsewhere, Maybe?

Spore and Us

While Spore definitely assumes that life within our universe is common, not to mention intelligent and complex. Such assumptions cannot be made about our own world, where life is only known to exist on our home planet of Earth. The world is torn into two groups: those that believe we are alone in this vast world and others who believe that life exists elsewhere. Neither can proven or denied until life is found. If life is not found, the question will remain because it absolutely impossible for us to explore the vastness of space in its entirety.

Candidates for Life

Many scientists believe that life will be found on other planets or moons of our solar system, while others are more skeptical. However, both camps agree that if life is found, it will be of the primitive microbial sort. It will primitive mostly because there isn’t enough energy to support anything else. Much of today’s research is involved in determining the factors that allow life to appear. There are number of locations of interest within our solar system, which we will briefly go over.

Mars
Mars may offer the best chance of finding life or signs of past life. The surface is very hostile, but we know that planet was once much more hospitable with vast oceans, so it’s possible that we may find microscopic fossils of microorganisms buried within rocks. But researchers are confident that they may find even greater signs of life on mars: current life. The idea is that while there is definitely water on mars, most of it is frozen as ice, but underground there may be enough heat to make the water liquid. Whenever you have liquid water and heat, you have a very good chance that over millions and billions of years, life could arise. Therefore, as you can expect, some of the coming mars missions are focusing on locations with water and will dig beneath surface. Unfortunately, digging much deeper than a few inches beneath the surface probably will not be possible until there is a manned mission to the red planet

Venus
In general, Venus is a hostile environment. It has no water on its surface, it’s incredibly hot (450+ degrees) and it has acid rain to boot. But some believe life may be found in the clouds, because the temperatures would be much more hospitable and the clouds probably have a bit water vapor as well. But chances are still pretty slim

Europa (Moon of Jupiter)
This is likely the second best place to look for life, as beneath this moon’s icy surface is gigantic ocean. Because of tidal heating there may be enough heat near deep sea vents to cause chemical reactions (energy). When you have energy and water, you have the possibility for life. If there is life, it will have to be microscopic because the energy produced by the vents would be too low to sustain anything larger.