2 min
Ancient Aliens: Are we really alone in the Universe? Stynd Podcast
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- News
For the longest time, belief in extraterrestrial life was considered a fringe viewpoint, more suitable for science fiction conventions and fans of Star Trek or the X-Files. Today, it’s the exact opposite. Those who reject the notion of alien life are considered to be outliers. This change in attitude occurred for several reasons, perhaps none as important as the discovery that exoplanets are everywhere — 100 billion of them in the Milky Way galaxy alone.
Surely, with so many opportunities for life to flourish, the universe must be teeming with extraterrestrials. But is it? Other than Earth, there’s almost certainly no other life in our solar system. Most exoplanets we know of are not particularly hospitable to life. Most stars are incapable of supporting photosynthesis.
The reality is that Earth-like planets are probably rare, but that doesn’t rule out that the entire universe, after all, is a pretty big place. While the spatial size of the entire universe is unknown, it is possible to measure the size of the observable universe, which is approximately 93 billion light-years in diameter at the present day.
This is the exact reason why, though humankind has never found any sign of any extraterrestrial life outside of our planet, many scientists do believe in the possibility that it's just a matter of time before we would get a news flash from channels like CNN or BBC that some mission that NASA or ISRO did discover a bacteria on some planet which has no relation to any life present on earth.
For the longest time, belief in extraterrestrial life was considered a fringe viewpoint, more suitable for science fiction conventions and fans of Star Trek or the X-Files. Today, it’s the exact opposite. Those who reject the notion of alien life are considered to be outliers. This change in attitude occurred for several reasons, perhaps none as important as the discovery that exoplanets are everywhere — 100 billion of them in the Milky Way galaxy alone.
Surely, with so many opportunities for life to flourish, the universe must be teeming with extraterrestrials. But is it? Other than Earth, there’s almost certainly no other life in our solar system. Most exoplanets we know of are not particularly hospitable to life. Most stars are incapable of supporting photosynthesis.
The reality is that Earth-like planets are probably rare, but that doesn’t rule out that the entire universe, after all, is a pretty big place. While the spatial size of the entire universe is unknown, it is possible to measure the size of the observable universe, which is approximately 93 billion light-years in diameter at the present day.
This is the exact reason why, though humankind has never found any sign of any extraterrestrial life outside of our planet, many scientists do believe in the possibility that it's just a matter of time before we would get a news flash from channels like CNN or BBC that some mission that NASA or ISRO did discover a bacteria on some planet which has no relation to any life present on earth.
2 min