Will humanity find life on other planets within the next century? If so, what do you think we will find?

NASA is preparing "life searching" missions in order to detect life on other planets and I wonder, what will we find? Some people believe that we will find animal life before we find intelligent life. Some believe that just finding plants will be a sign of "life" while others don't think we'll find any life at all. What's your opinion?

Will humanity find life on other planets within the next century? If so, what do you think we will find?
Yes. Follow on missions to TPF will be able to do spectroscopy of terrestrial planet atmospheres. Tell tale signs of ozone or other free oxygen in the atmospheres conclusively implies some process is at work producing it, because it has a very short lifetime otherwise.





The article I cite is too new to be free, but the abstract gives you the gist.





So it won't conclusively demonstrate life, but will make a strong case for it. The form of the life is likely to be algae type stuff.





Why am I so certain? Life arose on Earth pretty darn quickly, so it is not likely that it is such a rare event. I suspect many terrestrial planets in its star's habitable zone will have life similar to that found on earth a few billion years ago.
Reply:%26gt;Tell tale signs of ozone or other free oxygen in the atmospheres conclusively implies some process is at work producing it





CONCLUSIVELY IMPLIES????!!!!!???? What a jacktard.





If all you wanted was to hear an answer you already knew, why'd you even asked the question? Report It

Reply:Morpheus... you are a fool Report It

Reply:do some homework there guy and you might know a little more. I asked the question because I wanted to hear peoples point of view end of story. Sorry if you're pissed cuz I didn't choose your answer. Report It

Reply:Take a course in critical thinking. How can something that is implied be conclusive? I could care less if you pick my answer, just pick a rational one. But then, you asked for 'opinions', so I guess you had no intention of learning anything anyway. Report It

Reply:ok thanks guy...get over it Report It

Reply:hm





looks like u dont have a clue:)








i give u a clue





wake up and smell the roses:)
Reply:No, and nothing.





Even traveling at a ridiculously impossible speed like 1/10 the speed of light, it would take 40 years to reach our nearest neighbor, Proxima Centuri, which is actually a system of four stars, and scientists doubt there are any earth-like planets there anyway.





One of the problems that most people simply don't understand is that the universe is insanely huge. The distances between stars are so great that looking and listening is about all we can do, probably for many hundreds, possibly thousands of years to come. Even if astronomers discovered an earth-like planet at a reasonable distance (lets say 50 light years), there's still absolutely no way we could possibly know if there is life on it. We could direct a message towards it, but it would take 50 years to get there. Then, if by luck there were intelligent beings there, who knows if they scan the sky for messages. They may simply be concerned with their own affairs. Or they may live underwater. Or they may be cave people.





But lets say they're like us, and they happened to be insanely lucky and are listening at the exact spot in the sky for our message, at the exact time fifty years from now to hear it, and lets also assume that we broadcasted it long enough to get their attention and notice it. There's no way to know if their intelligence has any correlation to ours, or if they can even distinguish it as a message.





So again lets give the benefit of the doubt and say they understand it and broadcast a response. That will also take 50 years to get back to Earth. Now, further assume that 100 years from now, there are no great policy changes, NASA still exists, CETI is still being funded, and the scientists who first broadcasted the message somehow made certain that a few generations down the road, some very responsible entity continued to listen to that spot in space. Maybe, if we're really, really, really, lucky, we recognize the alien broadcast, and are somehow able to decipher it... and hopefully the aliens are broadcasting continuously so we keep getting the message.





Well, now we have our proof, but what do we do? It's going to take another half lifetime to communicate a second time. As monumental as this would be, most people would return to their daily affairs of plain old living, and forget about our alien friends. After all, a great many won't be alive to hear their answer





Frustrating eh?





Such is the nature of interstellar distances. And this is incredible best-case scenario thinking. A life-seeking probe is simply the stuff of science fiction. Voyager I, launched 10 years ago, is only 12 light HOURS away from earth!
Reply:I think we will find life on other planets sooner than that. scientists have discovered other stars that have planets orbitting them, much like how our solar system works. the universe is so huge! i think we would be selfish to think we were the only living beings inhabiting it.





my guess is that they will be something like us...but im not sure. i am just a firm believer that we will find life.
Reply:No, we cannot find life on other planets,