• Question: do you think that there are other living life forms in space?

    Asked by SAYr9 to Ellen, Elliot, Hazel, Rupesh, Thomas on 10 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Elliot Jokl

      Elliot Jokl answered on 10 Jun 2016:

      Thanks for the question!

      Yes! Space is so big and so old that even if the chance of life happening are very small, there is enough time and there are enough places that it has probably happened many times.

      It’s kind of like playing the lottery. The chances of winning with one ticket are very small, but the age and size of space mean it is like buying billions of lottery tickets – you will win many times over.

      Of course, space being so old and so big also means that these other life forms may be too far away for us to ever know about. What we do know for sure is that the building blocks for life have been found on comets and asteroids, so the materials to make life happen are definitely out and about in space. Some people think that life on Earth got started because these crash landed onto Earth and jump-started the process (though that is just one theory).

    • Photo: Thomas Biggans

      Thomas Biggans answered on 11 Jun 2016:

      Yes I do, it happened here on Earth so it’s likely it happened somewhere else too. I don’t know whether we’ll ever find them and if we did find them what would they be like? Would we be able to talk to them? Would we be friends?

      In any case there are lots of people here on earth who are searching for other living life forms as well as traces of life that’s no longer there. They use very large telescopes, satellites and probes to collect information and then study it very carefully.

      Other life forms may have tuned it to our TV signal but depending on how far away they are this signal could be many many years old so they may only be on Episode 1 of Eastenders

    • Photo: Hazel Garvie-Cook

      Hazel Garvie-Cook answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      Yep I do! Space is mind blowing-ly big. I can’t imagine there not being some form of life out there. A pretty exciting thought!

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