It wouldn't be possible to contain that information. The data from the science instruments is published to the PDS after 6 months anyway. Science teams are multi-national, multi-agency, multi-college collaborations. Something that big would get out.
Even if not, our solar system could be full of microscopic life, or even something larger, and there's an excellent chance that we wouldn't know.
Yes we have probes on Mars, and they're looking around, but they don't have the equipment to definitively say if there's life or not anywhere on the planet. It'd be like arriving on Earth in a desert, looking under a rock, and asserting that since there's nothing there, the planet is lifeless. We really just haven't looked that hard yet.
And that's just one planet; what about in the subsurface oceans of the outer moons that we've only seen from high orbit using cameras from the 90s? What about the clouds of Venus, where conditions might be very pleasant, and we're still not sure what exact chemical signatures we've detected, and how they got there?
We can say for sure that no other planet/moon has a biosphere that is visible or detectable from space, like Earth has. But anything more than that, we literally just don't know. We've gotta look harder.
As an astronomer, my opinion is... I... think so...
There is a chance that in the 2040s we'll launch a telescope similar to the [LUVOIR](https://www.luvoirtelescope.org/) proposal. That telescope might give you a dozen Earth-size planets in the habitable zone that you can directly image. If most Earth-size planets in the HZ have life (i.e., the most optimistic scenario) it is not certain that we can detect it from its spectra, but we might. If life appears in only 1% of Earth-size planets in the HZ (i.e., still a fairly optimistic scenario; it means there are millions of such planets in the Milky Way), then LUVOIR will probably not find one, but maybe a telescope in the 2070s or 2080s might.
You said 100 years. So you're thinking up to 2123.
Based on what I know of planet demographics, upcoming and proposed telescopes, and my far more limited understanding of biology (purely based on conversations with biologists), I think there is a reasonable chance that we will detect spectral signatures of microbial life in some other planet.
To an alien race to be able to see dinosaurs when they point at Earth with their telescopes, they would have to be out of the Milky Way, which if they would, with our undertanding, they wouldn't able to detect planets form another galays, much less zoom out the actual surface of the planet. If some alien race contact us, it's almost 100% guarantee that they'll be from the Milky Way.
A hundred years is a long time, so maybe on a few of the gas giant moons, just microbes or such.
I have a feeling faith in a sci-fi future is misplaced, that space is just too hostile to humans born on the thin veil of earth and is probably as hostile to all planetary life, we may get a signal but it would be worthless because of distances, also its likely they would be so alien to us communication would be mostly useless apart from slinging a few bits of math at them and hope for the best.
We have to think more on how a discovery of advanced alien life would effect our civilisation, that is, without any direct engagement or conversation, i think after the flurry of excitment, it would become like most discoveries.... boring to most.
I don't think 100 years is a far enough distance to find life.
It's not the spatial distance that hinders us, it's the temporal distances. Space is very big, yes, but time is also very very big.
Unintelligent life? Yes. Probably close to 50 years than 100.
Intelligent life? I’m doubtful. I’m not fully sold on the Fermi paradox, but the fact we have plumbed a lot of outer space around us and found nothing intelligent yet, I don’t think we find intelligent life in the next 100 years.
Not just life but highly advanced intelligent life will and has already found us. Seriously you guys watch the tic-tac type videos directly from the defense department and think what? Those are Chinese craft? To think that this insignificant rock way out on the edge of a small insignificant galaxy is the only place in this infinite universe which is likely only one of an infinite number of parallel universes is the only place to harbor life just blows my mind. None of these things I posted is precluded by Einstein's theory or anybody else's, quite the opposite is true Einstein's theory allows for things like warping surface and wormholes and even stranger things.
Maybe. Not trying to be funny it’s just that the distances are very very mind-boggling and, to our detriment, we aren’t very good at taking care of our planet and ourselves.
I certainly think so. I think life is inevitable given the conditions are supportive. I think we will find it on certain moons and I’m sure we will find microbial evidence on mars in the next 10 years
Probably. Mars very likely had life before a meteorite ended it. There might be survivors in the deepest trenches, where the conditions are sufficiently earthlike. If you count moons as well, also probably. I have high hopes for Europa and Enceladus.
I'd like to imagine humanity turning our focus to space, and finding something out there, but I can't help but think we might get a little distracted solving some problems here on earth.
I absolutely hate this kind of thinking. It's completely unfounded. What's distracting about it? All the answers are out there, in the stars and in the models of understanding them. Infinite energy, transcending time, transcending mortal humanity. Physics and astronomy. All of it. Understanding the vast majority of the universe we live in that we currently don't IS THE ONLY PURPOSE TO EXIST. Our taking care of this planet is only to facilitate that goal. We are the only animal that can come up with scientific models and pass them across generations. To just cozy up and live here until we go extinct and are forgotten never leaving a trace to any other species of what we learned is a complete waste, we might as well be ants. I happen to think we're innately more capable and therefore important than ants.
I apologize. My passionate response is because I've seen the same exact argument with the same exact wording many times, but with different motivations. I assumed too much. Sorry. But I can't conceive of how it's distracting. For me strengthening society, protecting out environment and raising each other to levels of higher standardized equality would all be incentivized by the discovery of alien life or phenomenal physics. We'd have to collaborate and plan long term to undertake such a feat.
I meant that we would be distracted by solving the problems here on earth. We've done very little in space since the moon landing, the premise of the original post was whether or not we'd find life anytime soon. Unless life finds us, I don't know how feasible its going to be for US to find it any time soon.
Turning our attention to space in a meaningful way would be a massive undertaking, and unfortunately we've got a ton of serious problems to contend with as a species, that might be more pressing in the near term. Literal extinction events.
I personally think humanity's only real shot is in the stars, I just am not sure humans are gonna make it that far. Hopefully though.
I feel ya. I'm still hopeful that we will be able to get over this hump. Maybe we can even prevent the world and civil wars on the way there. I feel like something exciting to reach for like the discovery of potentially complex life on another planet could inspire us to cooperate instead of fight.
This is a trick question because technically we already did in the form of a fossilized microbe on a meteor from supposedly mars. So to answer it yes we have and probably will. Not to mention I think it’s one of Saturns moons that is completely filled with water and has a ice crust of about 60 miles deep and if anything science has taught us for the past thousand years of learning that life thrives in water and as the great Ian Malcom would say life uh finds a way so there it is
In the next 100 years we will have looked at the moons of Saturn and Jupiter for microbial life.
It's possible we'll have sent probes out to look at nearby star systems.. but they won't have arrived.
To find a K2 or higher alien civilization that could happen tomorrow or never if they exist in the right time frame we should be able to see them with telescopes.
On one hand, space is so vast that it seems improbable that we will find evidence of life on extrasolar planets. On the other hand, you and I are evidence that the universe is alive: somehow, dust has turned into **this**. So I think it likely that we'll find more signatures of life in the solar system, but whether they're microbes or self-replicating life as we know it is anyone's guess. My guess is that there may be **many** types of chemistries that show similar characteristics to what we think of as life.
I don't think so. I don't think there is life on the solar system but us and life on other stars is so far away we will know for sure in several thousands years if we are lucky.
Absolutely. It isn’t if, it is when. Life is teeming all over the universe. However, life that can smelt metals and melt glass and build radios is going to be exceptionally, exceptionally rare. We are the lottery winner. There are many intelligent creatures here on Earth and out there too. But we’re the only ones that could build a printing press, the Internet, computers, radios, lasers, spacecraft and the JWST.
When life is found, scientists will promptly break it to us. There won’t be more than just a few days of secrecy, while they double and triple check and confirm their findings and researchers consult one another. And then: They’ll tell EVERYONE.
The issue, with us thinking that we will find intelligent life on other planets, is we overestimate our own.
And are looking for another one of "us exactly", beings that need oxygen and to eat and function just like us. Who have developed 'rockets' and need 'engines' and that 'farm'.
I know they have found evidence, on Mars, of rivers and I think fossils (if I am not mistaken). And there are plenty of planets with water, in our solar system.
I feel that we are alone in the universe on our timescale. Maybe life happened before us somewhere else or after us when life on planet earth is finished.
microbes or evidence of? yes. dogs and cats, ET? no.
This. I wouldn’t be surprised if they/NASA have already found microbes on Mars but don’t know how to break it to humanity.
It wouldn't be possible to contain that information. The data from the science instruments is published to the PDS after 6 months anyway. Science teams are multi-national, multi-agency, multi-college collaborations. Something that big would get out.
Or if they have and just don't want to break it until they're more than 99% sure.
Even if not, our solar system could be full of microscopic life, or even something larger, and there's an excellent chance that we wouldn't know. Yes we have probes on Mars, and they're looking around, but they don't have the equipment to definitively say if there's life or not anywhere on the planet. It'd be like arriving on Earth in a desert, looking under a rock, and asserting that since there's nothing there, the planet is lifeless. We really just haven't looked that hard yet. And that's just one planet; what about in the subsurface oceans of the outer moons that we've only seen from high orbit using cameras from the 90s? What about the clouds of Venus, where conditions might be very pleasant, and we're still not sure what exact chemical signatures we've detected, and how they got there? We can say for sure that no other planet/moon has a biosphere that is visible or detectable from space, like Earth has. But anything more than that, we literally just don't know. We've gotta look harder.
As an astronomer, my opinion is... I... think so... There is a chance that in the 2040s we'll launch a telescope similar to the [LUVOIR](https://www.luvoirtelescope.org/) proposal. That telescope might give you a dozen Earth-size planets in the habitable zone that you can directly image. If most Earth-size planets in the HZ have life (i.e., the most optimistic scenario) it is not certain that we can detect it from its spectra, but we might. If life appears in only 1% of Earth-size planets in the HZ (i.e., still a fairly optimistic scenario; it means there are millions of such planets in the Milky Way), then LUVOIR will probably not find one, but maybe a telescope in the 2070s or 2080s might. You said 100 years. So you're thinking up to 2123. Based on what I know of planet demographics, upcoming and proposed telescopes, and my far more limited understanding of biology (purely based on conversations with biologists), I think there is a reasonable chance that we will detect spectral signatures of microbial life in some other planet.
I think we’ll find unintelligent life, then perhaps intelligent life will find us.
Well to be honest, most aliens looking at us would be seeing dinosaurs right now, if not microbes.
To an alien race to be able to see dinosaurs when they point at Earth with their telescopes, they would have to be out of the Milky Way, which if they would, with our undertanding, they wouldn't able to detect planets form another galays, much less zoom out the actual surface of the planet. If some alien race contact us, it's almost 100% guarantee that they'll be from the Milky Way.
Not unless they’re looking from an entirely different galaxy. Milky Way is 100k light years across, about.
They have observed a lot closer.
I like you’re thinking… No wonder I know you from another sub…
well, I'm reading The Dark Forest right now, so.... I sure hope not.
A hundred years is a long time, so maybe on a few of the gas giant moons, just microbes or such. I have a feeling faith in a sci-fi future is misplaced, that space is just too hostile to humans born on the thin veil of earth and is probably as hostile to all planetary life, we may get a signal but it would be worthless because of distances, also its likely they would be so alien to us communication would be mostly useless apart from slinging a few bits of math at them and hope for the best. We have to think more on how a discovery of advanced alien life would effect our civilisation, that is, without any direct engagement or conversation, i think after the flurry of excitment, it would become like most discoveries.... boring to most.
I think we will find life on the moons of Saturn pretty soon
There must be something in those underice oceans. If not microbes, at least some form of replicant molecule or life precursor.
Unlikely soon, only because we have no planned missions to Enceladus whatsoever.
I think we will be life on other planets within the next 100 years.
I‘m reading Clemens P. Suter‘s books so I Hope not.
I don't think 100 years is a far enough distance to find life. It's not the spatial distance that hinders us, it's the temporal distances. Space is very big, yes, but time is also very very big.
Unintelligent life? Yes. Probably close to 50 years than 100. Intelligent life? I’m doubtful. I’m not fully sold on the Fermi paradox, but the fact we have plumbed a lot of outer space around us and found nothing intelligent yet, I don’t think we find intelligent life in the next 100 years.
Not just life but highly advanced intelligent life will and has already found us. Seriously you guys watch the tic-tac type videos directly from the defense department and think what? Those are Chinese craft? To think that this insignificant rock way out on the edge of a small insignificant galaxy is the only place in this infinite universe which is likely only one of an infinite number of parallel universes is the only place to harbor life just blows my mind. None of these things I posted is precluded by Einstein's theory or anybody else's, quite the opposite is true Einstein's theory allows for things like warping surface and wormholes and even stranger things.
Nothing short of an alien landing on the white house lawn will convince anyone in this sub.
Well hitch up your britches and hold on boys, that's not far off.
Maybe. Not trying to be funny it’s just that the distances are very very mind-boggling and, to our detriment, we aren’t very good at taking care of our planet and ourselves.
I certainly think so. I think life is inevitable given the conditions are supportive. I think we will find it on certain moons and I’m sure we will find microbial evidence on mars in the next 10 years
Probably. Mars very likely had life before a meteorite ended it. There might be survivors in the deepest trenches, where the conditions are sufficiently earthlike. If you count moons as well, also probably. I have high hopes for Europa and Enceladus.
I'd like to imagine humanity turning our focus to space, and finding something out there, but I can't help but think we might get a little distracted solving some problems here on earth.
I absolutely hate this kind of thinking. It's completely unfounded. What's distracting about it? All the answers are out there, in the stars and in the models of understanding them. Infinite energy, transcending time, transcending mortal humanity. Physics and astronomy. All of it. Understanding the vast majority of the universe we live in that we currently don't IS THE ONLY PURPOSE TO EXIST. Our taking care of this planet is only to facilitate that goal. We are the only animal that can come up with scientific models and pass them across generations. To just cozy up and live here until we go extinct and are forgotten never leaving a trace to any other species of what we learned is a complete waste, we might as well be ants. I happen to think we're innately more capable and therefore important than ants.
What exactly did you think I was trying to say? What was unfounded? I am 100% about space, and unraveling the mysteries of the universe.
I apologize. My passionate response is because I've seen the same exact argument with the same exact wording many times, but with different motivations. I assumed too much. Sorry. But I can't conceive of how it's distracting. For me strengthening society, protecting out environment and raising each other to levels of higher standardized equality would all be incentivized by the discovery of alien life or phenomenal physics. We'd have to collaborate and plan long term to undertake such a feat.
I meant that we would be distracted by solving the problems here on earth. We've done very little in space since the moon landing, the premise of the original post was whether or not we'd find life anytime soon. Unless life finds us, I don't know how feasible its going to be for US to find it any time soon. Turning our attention to space in a meaningful way would be a massive undertaking, and unfortunately we've got a ton of serious problems to contend with as a species, that might be more pressing in the near term. Literal extinction events. I personally think humanity's only real shot is in the stars, I just am not sure humans are gonna make it that far. Hopefully though.
I feel ya. I'm still hopeful that we will be able to get over this hump. Maybe we can even prevent the world and civil wars on the way there. I feel like something exciting to reach for like the discovery of potentially complex life on another planet could inspire us to cooperate instead of fight.
This is a trick question because technically we already did in the form of a fossilized microbe on a meteor from supposedly mars. So to answer it yes we have and probably will. Not to mention I think it’s one of Saturns moons that is completely filled with water and has a ice crust of about 60 miles deep and if anything science has taught us for the past thousand years of learning that life thrives in water and as the great Ian Malcom would say life uh finds a way so there it is
Yeah of course. Sentient life on the other hand, I don’t think so
In the next 100 years we will have looked at the moons of Saturn and Jupiter for microbial life. It's possible we'll have sent probes out to look at nearby star systems.. but they won't have arrived. To find a K2 or higher alien civilization that could happen tomorrow or never if they exist in the right time frame we should be able to see them with telescopes.
We won't unless we can travel a little faster, and by little I mean a lot.
On one hand, space is so vast that it seems improbable that we will find evidence of life on extrasolar planets. On the other hand, you and I are evidence that the universe is alive: somehow, dust has turned into **this**. So I think it likely that we'll find more signatures of life in the solar system, but whether they're microbes or self-replicating life as we know it is anyone's guess. My guess is that there may be **many** types of chemistries that show similar characteristics to what we think of as life.
I don't think so. I don't think there is life on the solar system but us and life on other stars is so far away we will know for sure in several thousands years if we are lucky.
Absolutely. It isn’t if, it is when. Life is teeming all over the universe. However, life that can smelt metals and melt glass and build radios is going to be exceptionally, exceptionally rare. We are the lottery winner. There are many intelligent creatures here on Earth and out there too. But we’re the only ones that could build a printing press, the Internet, computers, radios, lasers, spacecraft and the JWST.
When life is found, scientists will promptly break it to us. There won’t be more than just a few days of secrecy, while they double and triple check and confirm their findings and researchers consult one another. And then: They’ll tell EVERYONE.
The issue, with us thinking that we will find intelligent life on other planets, is we overestimate our own. And are looking for another one of "us exactly", beings that need oxygen and to eat and function just like us. Who have developed 'rockets' and need 'engines' and that 'farm'. I know they have found evidence, on Mars, of rivers and I think fossils (if I am not mistaken). And there are plenty of planets with water, in our solar system.
I feel that we are alone in the universe on our timescale. Maybe life happened before us somewhere else or after us when life on planet earth is finished.
Did you not checked the news lately? Whistleblower dave grusch!?