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| http://www.superbwallpapers.com/ |
They’ve been a topic of heated debate, but I take the side that says they exist. What exactly? Aliens, not illegal aliens, but the commonly known as little green men. It might not be creatures how they are usually described, but something all together. An article, all about space, says that life in space will be discovered by 2025. The article uses many quotes from NASA scientists. The question I will be answering is: What proof do we have life could exist elsewhere, and what benefits will it have to us? My answer is that there are many reasons on how life could exist in space, with other galaxies similar to ours, and the benefits it holds to us is that we could find another habitable place, as well as possibly other resources.
To begin with, how could life exist out there? We all know that space is a void, no air to breathe, immense pressure that would kill us, if not for our astronaut suits. But with all the planets and galaxies, there is a way. First, focusing on our own galaxy, the Milky Way, we see that obviously there is life. Life forms exist, on Earth. But then there’s Mars. Our neighboring planet that once held water, could that possibly still have some type of life? Proof of oceans on Mars is that it has markings on its surface. “Oceans covered much of Mars in the ancient past, and seasonal dark streaks observed on the Red Planet's surface today may be caused by salty flowing water.” As you can see, it not only says that oceans existed on Mars, but it gives proof as well. Back to the idea of life on Mars, according to NASA, yes, it may. “Further, NASA's Curiosity rover has found carbon-containing organic molecules and "fixed" nitrogen, basic ingredients necessary for Earth-like life, on the Martian surface.” It says that elements for life exist on Mars, which also exist on Earth. So life may have existed on Mars, but now there’s the issue whether there’s life out of our galaxy. It’s kind of hard to say “No, life can only exist on Earth and nowhere else in this infinite, seemingly continuously expanding universe, with millions and billions of galaxies just like the our Milky Way that contains trillions of planets like Earth.” I just can’t see someone making that argument. Moving on, there are two classifications of planets, terrestrial and gas giants. “Indeed, Kepler's work has shown that rocky worlds like Earth and Mars are probably more common throughout the galaxy than gas giants such as Saturn and Jupiter.” This means that the likelihood of more planets similar to Earth and Mars is far greater than planets such as Jupiter existing. The possibility of life existing elsewhere in our universe, even our galaxy is highly likely
Now that I’ve gotten past showing the likeliness of alien life, I’d like to address the benefits. The answer may seem like there’s absolutely none, and that it’s foolish to waste over billions of dollars for just exploring for more life. However, if there’s life-like environments in space, that means it’s habitable. In this dying Earth, we need to find a way out, or find a way to decrease our consumption of materials. But that’s besides the point, moving forward, once we can find a habitable place, we can also use it’s resources. “The main goal of this $2.1 billion mission will be to shed light on the icy moon's potential habitability, but it could also search for signs of alien life: Agency officials are considering ways to sample and study the plumes of water vapor that apparently erupt from Europa's south polar region.” Europa is one of the moons of Jupiter, and has a smooth icy surface. Underneath this surface is oceans of water. If we received water from Europa, after extensive testing and making sure it’s safe, we could soon solve water shortage problems. This would greatly benefit all of us, since Europa is the sixth largest moon, and the fifteenth largest object in the Solar System, meaning it has a massive abundance of water. Not only can we derive resources that would ultimately benefit us, but we can also find habitable places, as I referred to earlier. The major point of habitable planets other than Earth is that the Earth is overpopulated. Humans grow at an exponential rate, and the Earth struggles to stay with our sudden growth. Once we find a place that we can inhabit, we can move more and more people to those planets, slowly decreasing the population on Earth. This will benefit Earth itself, as well as people because they get a new abundance of resources, and they’ve been removed from the original social binding they were in. They have a new start, in a sense.
I think that it would be interesting, because space has so many benefits, It’s hard to count them all. If we find new life, we can study it, and hopefully it won’t be hostile, like nearly every alien movie ever. We could learn more about life, and other things. Not only could we find life, but begin life on new planets, which is an extremely interesting concept to me. We would inhabit other places, and use those resources, but it interests me that places like this could actually exist. The universe is known for apparently being endless, so basically anything can occur in this vast space. We don’t know what lies beyond in galaxies far, far away, and maybe someday we will find out.
For my final blog post, I’ll compare both space and sea again, and see which is the better one, with all the information I have gathered. I will try to consider each from a set of similar criteria.
