Humanity’s biggest question: Are we alone?
The planet we walk on was created billions of years ago and currently there are billions of species and humans that live here. We rely on Earth to keep us alive and give us the planet we live on. But one of our most asked questions, since we discovered we aren’t the only planet, is: Are we truly alone in this universe?
From the ground, we can confirm that out galaxy holds billions of planets and stars, yet we haven’t found any planet which has life on it. Earth is the only planet (that we know of) that has life. But this question leads to more questions, which require answers before we can consider the main one.
Could other planets support life? Yes. NASA have discovered planets in the Goldilocks zone. This is the term used for the distance from the sun where the temperature isn’t too hot or too cold, like the original story, with the bears and their porridge. But, to make sure the planet can support life, the atmosphere needs to act as a protective bubble around our planet. One that is unseen but is there. Its main role is to protect the planet from harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays, while also keeping heat trapped to maintain a habitable temperature for both day and night. Without it, the temperature would be, for example, like our moon, in the sense that it would be extremely cold during the night, yet extremely hot during the day.
One planet, that NASA has been exploring for previous signs of life, is closer than you think. It’s our neighbour, Mars. The search for life, on Mars, was the main goal of the Mars 2020 mission, using the rover Perseverance. Scientists believe Mars would be important as it would help us look back to our own origins and hopefully find answers as to how Earth became the biologically unique planet it is today. In the mission, the landing site was Jezero Crater, as billions of years ago, it once housed a lake, when Mars was like Earth. Hospitable and wet. Perseverance sent back samples of Mars, to be studied closely as to what happened to the water and life on Mars.
What happens if we ever discover life? Or if life finds us? In space currently, both Voyagers 1 and 2 carry “time capsules” called the Golden Records, which were launched in 1977.
But what’s on these records? These records hold key information about our planet. There are 115 images, a variety of natural sounds (such as wind, thunder, birds and other animals), music of different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings in 55 different languages. If life beyond our planet finds them, we’ve given them a warm insight as to what our planet is like.
While the hunt for life beyond our own has not been successful so far, people theorise about aliens, and there have been films regarding these theories. One example is Independence Day (1996) about surviving the aftermath of a worldwide attack from extraterrestrials.
https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanets/search-for-life/
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/voyager-golden-record-overview/
https://www.nasa.gov/general/what-is-earths-atmosphere/#hds-sidebar-nav-1
https://science.nasa.gov/blog/was-there-life-on-mars/
Izzy Bennett
