Life on other planets

[Digital]

Do you believe that other people, plant or animals exist on the other planets? At times I do wonder and the movies in the last few years have certainly contributed to my encouraging my wayward thoughts.

[Binkleywalker]

Like that quote from the movie Contact, if its just us, its an awful waste of space.

[alexis]

I have no idea. While I think assuming we are the only ones is stupid I am also not running around looking for little green men or anything. Its possible just about anything seems to be nowadays.

[AKmaro1]

Absolutely! Like Binkley said, it would be an awful waste of space. After all science tells us there are millions of galaxies in the Universe, and billions and billions of other stars and planets around them. And for some to think we are the only living thing out there just shows in my book a real sense of stupidity or you plainly don't care. Now whether we can ever meet any of these beings looks pretty slim right now, but I'm sure other more advanced civilizations exist that probably know of us right now.

[Binkleywalker]

What I find exciting are those planet hunters. I wouldn't be surprised if in my life time, they can find smaller planets around distant stars besides Jupiter sized gas giants. They already have a good idea where to look for Earth-like planets - start with systems that have stars similar to our own and try to find them in the so-called life zone (so far regarded as planets within the inner orbits of their host star like ours).

Still, I bet even that preconception will get busted eventually when you factor in other things that might make life possible on worlds further out in their orbits - stuff like tidal stresses. Io comes to mind as a bit of an extreme case what with its volcanism, but that gets me wonderin' that its possible.