SPACE EXPLORATION:COULD THERE be life on a distant planet, and if so what would it look like? And if there is, might it be so different from life on earth that we wouldn't be able to recognise it? The AAAS meeting held two sessions over the weekend seeking to answer these questions.
For Dr Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington the question isn’t whether there was life but rather when would we find it. He believes that virtually every sun-like star in the universe could have an earth-like rocky planet.
There were perhaps 100 billion sun-like stars in the universe and that gave a comparable number of earths, all potentially able to support life. “Intelligent life may be rare. What I am talking about isn’t necessarily planets that have intelligent life,” he said.
Many will have life in some form. “How are you going to prevent them from having life,” he added. “Life is so tenacious and hard to stop.”
We won’t have to wait long before we know given the launch of new satellites including the Kepler satellite to be launched within the next month. These will look specifically for planets and should be able to read signs of life on them.
Light reaching the satellites from these planets will give information about their atmosphere and whether they have water. The presence of methane could be an indication of life of some kind.
The question is, if life is there and somehow we could reach it, would we be able to recognise it as life? Conditions on other planets could have fostered life but not as we know it. It might be similar but use perhaps arsenic instead of phosphorous to power itself, suggested Prof Paul Davies of Arizona State University.