• Question: How does finding out if their is life living in space affect us?

    Asked by anon-244432 to Ondrej, Jordan, Eleanor, Ed, Christine, Alice on 11 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Edward Banks

      Edward Banks answered on 11 Mar 2020:

      It could shed light on the origin of life. For example, if we found life in space and it was similar to us- DNA based for example, that might suggest that all life had a single origin. And maybe some was kicked around through space in meteor impacts. But if it was completely different to us, that would suggest that life can evolve in different ways at different times- it didn’t just come into being once!

      There would also be profound philosophical implications if we did find other life- we would no longer be alone!

    • Photo: Eleanor Jones

      Eleanor Jones answered on 11 Mar 2020:

      I guess scientifically it could provide us with a lot of new insights. On a day-to-day basis though, for people like me that don’t study this kind of thing directly, I wouldn’t think it would affect us at all in a fundamental way. It would just be very cool to know that there is some other form of life in the Universe!

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