Question: Is there other life forms out in space? From Max

Monique Henson answered on 7 Nov 2015:

Probably! The universe is really big and has lots of stars in it. Lots of those stars have planets around them, which means there are many many planets. That means it’s quite likely that some of those planets have life on them. We’ve not found any evidence for life on other planets yet, but we think that life is probably out there somewhere.

This life might not be quite like aliens as we think of them. Rather than aliens being like humans, they might be a bit simpler – more like bacteria and viruses.

It’s possible that if life does exist somewhere else in the universe, that it might be too far away for us to find them. The distances between stars in the universe is so large that it takes a long time to send messages between them. The closest star to us (other than the Sun) is around 4 light years away – that means it would take 4 years for us to send a message to aliens living near that star. If we do find intelligent life on other planets, talking to them could be very slow!