Does life exist elsewhere in the universe?

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What I hope is that on some exotic world, whose solar system was spallated by a Supernova during formation, has boron based life. Boron is the only element besides carbon that is capable of forming complex, stable molecules.

Everywhere, but nothing till conditions provide. Blue Green Algae is the base DNA, and the same seems to be found in random space rocks. I do not think DNA a local invention.

Where it does get started, it produces enough Oxygen to poison it's self, which fuels a faster growth of it's self mutating.

While the general pattern is the same, conditions vary, and in our case, almost total wipeout nine times. Less destruction, highly intelligent reptiles, live feeders, reaching top of the food chain status. Mammals might still evolve, it is in the DNA, but only to the food source of reptiles level.

As for life like us, not that long ago there were several more like us, Neanderthal, Erectus, Denisovan, and our hairless ground ape line. We did not kill them, but only our line survived, so far.

Life, highly random selection!

I think probability suggests that there is life other than on the Earth, due to the sheer number of stars in the universe. Our galaxy alone has BILLIONS of stars, and there are at least BILLIONS of galaxies in the universe. What's a billion squared - a QUINTILLION? Surely quite a few out of a quintillion have to be suitable for life, even if we're only considering carbon-based life!

I seems to me that life is a fundamental aspect of the universe just like the formation of galaxies, stars and solar systems. Now as for intelligent life such as our selves is another matter entirely, consider the fact that one of the key aspects of our existence is the moon, which formed after a Mars sized planet dubbed Thia collided with the earth at just the right angle. This planet has a very unusual moon and there are a lot of side effects of having obtained a moon under such extremely unlikely circumstances, side effects such as a very thin crust which permits plate tectonics which sequesters carbon which prevents this planet from becoming like Venus. You see Venus has a very thick crust but its interior is still very hot it also rotates very slowly which prevents the formation of a geomagnetic field. Venus' crust is locked in place with no where to go, and it has had massive volcanic resurfacing in the geologically recent past, as a result its atmospheric pressure is 92 times that of the earth and because it is mostly C02 surface temps are around 470 Celsius.

What this means for intelligent life such as ourselves is that there are vary narrow conditions which will permit our evolution which are also extraordinarily unlikely, it is only because the universe is so vast that chance has enabled us to evolve to the point where we can contemplate just how unlikely our existence really is.

The Moon And Plate Tectonics: Why We Are Alone
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01x1.html

How the Moon Was Born!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO45ZiGq ... plpp_video

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25587911/ns ... ElSfo2PVJI

The cosmos is very big. It should be possible that living things exists somewhere in the cosmos. If the laws of physics are the same everywhere then life should be possible in many places.

ruveyn

Nope. There are chemical reason for the impossibility of silicon based life. Notably the length of silicon hydrogen is large enough that silanes decompose spontaneously. Silicon also is not capable of forming stable double bonds which play a large role in metabolism. The only stable macromolecules of silicon are silicone polymers which are monotonous and useless for any kind of biochemistry.

i hope you won't mind if I draw attention to two books (actually they are one):

habitable planets for man by stephen h. dole (http://www.rand.org/pubs/commercial_books/CB179-1.html) and planets for man by the same author and isaac asimov (http://www.rand.org/pubs/commercial_books/CB183-1.html). actually the only difference is that the latter is rewritten by asimov for the masses, so it's easier to understand. both is downloadable freely from the given links.

the book is about what criterias are needed for a planet to be suitable for humans. it describes the necessities of life from many aspects, eg. what temperature, radiation, gravity, length of day, axial tilt, atmospheric pressure, etc etc is required for life to develop. at the end you'll see, that it's not that impossible to have a planet where these features are present, but it's very difficult to have ALL the requirements fulfilled. of course it is much harder to find a habitable planet for mankind than to find a planet capable of bearing life. even the size of our moon added much to the chance for mankind to develop.

i've voted yes to the original question. no doubt there's life elsewhere too, most probably life is determined, and the universe is FULL of it. why we haven't found signs of life yet is a different question. Earth is about 4 billion years old. we're using radio waves for 100 years back. in another 100 years I bet we won't use radio anymore. so the time window to give detectable signs of our existence is quite short compared to the age of our planet. this is probably valid for many other civilizations. it's quite improbable that another civilization signaled us with the best possible timing.

perhaps we could only detect traces of vegetation by analyzing exoplanets spectroscopically - as reflected light will contain information about the atmosphere of the planet in question. but that isn't a trivial thing to perform. and even if we find carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, it's not a clear proof of vegetation.

anyhow, I guess we will do best if we monitor novae and supernovae and look for signs of life in that direction. it's obvious to use those phenomena as cosmic lighthouses, and we should signal in the opposite of a nova too. because if we notice a nova, another developed civilization will discover and examine it too. so that might be a chance to detect intelligent life.

but that's just my humble opinion.

There may be thousands or even millions of Other Earths and we cannot get to a single one. They are too far away. We can't even get to the nearest star system, the triple star Centuri, which is a mere four light years away. With propulsion technology in hand or even on the horizon we could make it in 10,000 years so the only way to get there is in suspended animation which we have no technology for or even on the horizon. Another way is to increase our life span 1000 fold which we currently have no way doing, not even on the horizon.

So as far as Other Earths go, we may yet look upon them as they were in the past, but we will not go there.

ruveyn

It's impossible to be sure, but I consider it extremely likely.