We haven’t found any form of life other than terrestrial life in the Universe yet.
This may mean:
1- we don’t have instruments able to detect it yet;
2- life elsewhere might be different from what we consider life, which means we are not looking for the right signs.
Anyway, I really hope I will be able to answer YES to your question in the near future!
Mathematically speaking the answer is yes.
There is so much space in the universe that even if the only conditions that could create life are the exact ones found on earth – many practically identical planets have, do and will exist.
Life is likely to come in many other forms as well.
The issue – as claudia says – is we simply don’t have the tools to detect it.
Remember it takes 8 minutes from the light to come to the sun – and thats close!
In the asteroid belt – a relatively dense part of space – two rocks could easily be 100,000km apart!
Space is beyond vast – couple that with this example. If someone from our nearest galaxy, Andromeda, sent a light-speed signal, it would take something like 2.5 million years for the message to reach us.
Humans have only been around for a couple hundred thousand!
So its out there – but the chances are we’ll never meet each other.
This article was published in the conversation yesterday and I thought you might be interested. The conversation is a great way to find information written by experts in their fields.
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