• Question: If there is such thing as aliens do you think that they are trying to discover us?

    Asked by to Sarah, Sam, Roberto, Nate, Nat on 18 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Sarah Casewell

      Sarah Casewell answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      I think if they are as advanced as us, then yes they may be trying to discover us! This is what the SETI project is trying to discover! The problem is that anywhere with life may be very very far away – we haven’t found a planet likely to sustain life like ours yet, and we know about ~2000 planets around other stars!
      There is a chance that any life we discover is less evolved though – like microbes or bacteria in which case they won’t be contacting us any time soon!

    • Photo: Nate Bastian

      Nate Bastian answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      Yes, I think that it is very likely that there are. There are 300 billion stars in our galaxy (the Milky Way), and we now know that there are planets around many of them. Since planets are common, it seems likely that life would evolve on many of them, and on a few of them, intelligent life is also likely to evolve. It’s then only natural that they would be as curious as to the universe around them, as we are.

    • Photo: Natasha Stephen

      Natasha Stephen answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      I can’t imagine that if there is life elsewhere in the universe that they would be any less curious about us as we are them so yes, definitely! They must exist somewhere and hopefully SETI will find them soon!

    • Photo: Roberto Trotta

      Roberto Trotta answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      If aliens exist elsewhere in the Universe — and I think that’s very probable — and are sufficiently advanced they will certainly be asking the same questions as we are about the cosmos all around them. They will be looking for life elsewhere, too!

      There is something called “The Fermi Paradox” (named after a very clever Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi): If there are so many aliens out there, why haven’t we seen them yet?! THe answer might be that there aren’t that many, or if they are they never reach the stage by which they can travel to us — maybe because all civilizations end up destroying themselves with nuclear bombs before becoming capable of long-distance space travel… let’s hope for us that this is wrong!

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