• Question: can we be sure that there are other signs of intelligent life in other galaxies?

    Asked by 08abarnes to Evan on 23 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by olimar13.
    • Photo: Evan Keane

      Evan Keane answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Brilliant question 08abarnes. We cannot be sure of course, until we actually find some other intelligent life. For now astronomers like me just think that it is highly likely that there is intelligent life elsewhere in our Galaxy and others. Why?

      1. There doesn’t seem to be anything special about our solar system
      2. There are 100 billion stars in our Galaxy
      3. There are 100 billion galaxies in the Universe AT LEAST
      4. We are finding planets around other planets at a very fast rate. I just checked and the latest number is 563 planets. There is a catalogue here: http://exoplanet.eu/
      5. Many of those planets are Earth-size.

      It seems highly likely to me that we will find a planet very much like Earth soon and we know life can develop on a planet like that. But also I’m sure life can develop on other types of planets too. There is an equation for working out the number of intelligent civilisations in the Universe, called the Drake Equation, but we don’t know all the numbers to use in it yet!

      Do you think there are other intelligent beings out there in the Universe? 😀

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