It’s one of science’s most interesting topics. Are we the only ones here? With the launch of the James Webb satellite telescope, we may be closer to answering this issue than ever before. Pic@ Oneinchpunch by Canva.
According to a recent research published on a pre-print website, the telescope might find hints of life-supporting atmospheres on extraterrestrial worlds outside our solar system in just 20 hours.
The wobbling technique is a way of researching distant planets. When a planet circles its host star, it pulls on it constantly. So slightly with its gravity this causes a tiny wobble. A subtle rocking back and forth that can be measured by using precision instruments. You may like to read - NASA is tracking an new asteroid that has the potential to hit earth in 2046.
However the transit method has proven to be the most robust so far. It’s used for detecting and studying the properties of a planet via the dip in the brightness of its host star as the planet passes between it and us. But the James webb telescope will possibly transform exoplanet studies in the search for biosignatures in the atmospheres of alien worlds via transmission spectroscopy.
It is the most basic technique for analyzing samples in the infrared. Light from the host star passes through the exoplanet to be registered by the James webb telescopes detector.
For the first time in human history, we are on the verge of finding whether life exists elsewhere in the galaxy. Even in the solar system, I believe there must be. I wouldn’t be shocked if we discovered bacteria on Mars or one of Jupiter’s or Saturn’s moons. There’s liquid water where there’s a lot of it.
There is a reason, if you think about it. I think that it’s a guess is because if you look at the history of life on earth then. So the earth was created, but there was no life on it. It was a rock, and it cooled down practically instantly.
We detect signs of life on Earth as far back as 3.8 billion years ago, and potentially even further back than that. As a result, active geochemistry evolved into biochemistry on Earth at some point.
We have some idea that if you get gradients of temperature and acid and alkaline and the conditions that are naturally present on the surface of oceans.
Then complex carbon chemistry spontaneously happens. So we know that life almost certainly we know that life began on earth. i mean the other option is it came from space or something like that. But it probably didn’t.
So, at the very least, it happened here. That we know, that the conditions that led to the origin of life on earth were present on mars 3.8 4 billion years ago. We know that they’re present on europa today.
So I don’t think there’s anything remarkable about life; it’s simply chemistry, in my opinion. Because it happened here, the possibility that geochemistry becomes biochemistry isn’t far-fetched. So, given the same circumstances, I believe.
It would be surprising to me if the same thing didn’t happen in that life begins. so to test that is one of the great frontiers of science now it’s one of the great challenges which is why another reason we’re interested in mars because we know those conditions were there. Hydrothermal vent systems were known to exist on the ocean bottoms of Mars 3.8 or 4 billion years ago.
As a result, I’d like to know if what I’ve said is right. We discover life or traces of previous lives. In our galaxy alone, there are around 300 million planets that may support life as we know it. It might be claimed that, based on the sheer quantity of these planets, we are most likely not alone in the cosmos.
Searching Life
However, even if life exists elsewhere, it can be expected that the vast majority of it will be simple organisms such as microbes of course the most exciting life forms will be intelligent multicellular organisms such as us. But among the many attributes of life on earth intelligence is the rarest.
All species of animals land plants and most fungi on earth are multicellular as are most algae whereas few organisms are Uni amply multicellular like slime molds and social amoebi. multicellular organisms arise in various ways.
for example by cell division or by aggregation of many single cells but going from single cell life to multicellular life forms is one thing attaining intelligence is a different thing entirely and if the evolution of life on earth reflects that of life in the galaxy.
It can be argued intelligent civilizations are extremely rare what we do know about earth is that although life began let’s say 3.8 billion years ago.
It wasn’t until around 600 million years ago or so that or maybe at most 700 that you see any complex multicellular organisms at all. So for something like 3 billion years it was single-celled alone. One of the reasons I would guess is because of this.
If I had to guess, I’d think microorganisms would be common because life on Earth began so swiftly. Complex life multicellular life insects plants would be surprising to discover on Mars. Intelligence I would guess would be very rare because it took so long on earth to get there.
According to new study, half of the galaxy’s sun-like stars have rocky worlds in habitable zones where liquid water might pool or flow over their surfaces. This suggests that alien civilizations from other worlds may use some of the rocky worlds as home planets.
The drake equation uses seven factors to estimate the number of detectable civilizations in our galaxy.
The number of sun-like stars with planetary systems and the number of habitable planets in each of those systems are then taken into account.
It evaluates how frequently life arises on worlds with favorable settings and how frequently such life forms eventually create observable technology.
It took experts more than a half-century to start pinning down. How many planets could feasibly host life but now there is an even harder question to answer how often can extraterrestrials develop technologies that we can detect and the length of time such civilizations are detectable. Even if there were countless intelligent civilizations through the billions of years of the galaxy’s evolution.
We have no way of knowing about their existence if we don’t have the right timing. If civilizations are common or even slightly common then there should be civilizations ahead of us because there’s been so much time. You imagine the time scales. We’ve been around as a civilization. Let’s give say 40 000 years.
I don’t know how long our civilization’s been around let’s say that the galaxy is pretty much as old as the universe it’s 13 billion years worth of time. So the idea that there are no civilizations arose you know 100 million years ago, 200 million years ago, one billion years ago and imagine what they’d be like if they’d survived.
I mean we’ve been around we’ve had science. For example, let’s pretend it’s been 500 years since Newton or Copernicus. We had and look. What we’ve done. With voyager, we’ve gone beyond the solar system.
We’ve walked on the moon. We’re about to go to mars. I believe we are on the verge of colonizing our own solar system. We’ve done that in 500 years. So imagine a million years.
It’s one of the most common arguments used to claim that there are no civilizations in the cosmos. The Fermi paradox is named after a civilisation that existed a million years before us.
They should have inscribed their presence in the sky by now, and they should be able to see him. If we live a million years into the future, or even a few thousand years. We will be exploring the galaxy.
We will have spacecraft that are going through with the stars. We will be doing it. So our signature will become visible. I’m sure if we last. According to English science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke, there are two possibilities: we are alone in the cosmos or we are not, and both are as terrible.
Assume that sentient civilizations exist throughout the galaxy’s history. There has to be a first civilization that wondered if we were alone. Only in their instance would the answer be yes. Indeed terrifying when you think about it but maybe that civilization is us.
There are many people who believe we’ve already been visited by extraterrestrials especially with recent UFO footage that has been circling on the internet over the past years.
But scientifically speaking the data shown so far does not qualify as extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claim. That we are definitely not alone.
The Fermi paradox remains a problem regardless of how many people believe its extreme hubris for us to expect to find evidence of intelligent alien life.
When we cannot possibly imagine the most efficient ways an intelligent civilization millions of years ahead of us could traverse the galaxy. There is an argument as well that technology.
It would be tough for us to identify anything that advanced. i mean we tend to think of starship that you can see the signature of but actually maybe the civilization just becomes a Nano civilization but because that’s more efficient it’s a better way to do things.
So it’s possible. I suppose that there are space probes all over the place that are so small. We don’t see them since they are so efficient and consume so little energy. That’s a possibility, I suppose. Please share this article with others.
Prof. Brian Cox
HowNHowTo.Com Team
Pictures credit to pixabay.com – pexels.com
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