{"id":41474,"date":"2024-11-06T14:46:30","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T13:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/096fa1b3-3df6-421f-8242-9302594a5ff0"},"modified":"2024-11-06T16:26:39","modified_gmt":"2024-11-06T15:26:39","slug":"do-aliens-exist","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/rss_feed\/do-aliens-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"Do aliens exist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Could aliens exist? Iain Todd takes a look at the evidence… <\/p>

By Iain Todd\n <\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 06 November 2024 at 13:46 PM<\/p>

\n\n

Whether or not life exists beyond Earth is a question that has persisted since humans first began to look up at the night sky.<\/strong><\/p>

Nowadays, the\u00a0scientific pursuit in search of answers is known as SETI: the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.\u00a0SETI\u00a0works under the premise that,\u00a0if intelligent life exists out there,\u00a0we should\u00a0use science and technology to\u00a0try and\u00a0find it.<\/p>

Do aliens exist?<\/strong><\/h2>

It\u2019s\u00a0worth pointing out that, from a\u00a0neutral,\u00a0objective stance, there is no hard or even remotely convincing evidence that an advanced alien species has ever visited Earth.<\/p>

But\u00a0does that mean we should rule out life existing beyond Earth altogether?<\/p>

Exoplanet scientists\u00a0now infer\u00a0that,\u00a0for every star we can see in the night sky, there is on average\u00a0at least\u00a0one planet in orbit around it.<\/p>

There could be at most 400 billion stars in the Milky Way alone, and ours isn’t even a big galaxy. Our nearest major galactic neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy<\/a>, likely has one trillion stars.<\/p>

And there could be two trillion galaxies in the observable Universe.<\/p>

Think about how many planets there must be.<\/p>

Some\u00a0will be\u00a0scorching hot gas giants,\u00a0some freezing cold icy worlds.<\/p>

Many will be rocky, Earth-mass planets orbiting close enough to\u00a0their\u00a0host stars that liquid water\u00a0could\u00a0pool on their surface.<\/p>

They may have oceans and seas, just the right temperature for life to take hold the way it did on Earth.<\/p>

It seems\u00a0like life elsewhere in the Universe must surely be an inevitability.\u00a0And yet, there is a distinct lack of\u00a0any life, anywhere\u00a0that we have been able to detect.<\/p>

It seems inconceivable we could be the only planet to have ever hosted\u00a0living beings, and yet for the time being at least, we\u00a0must\u00a0resign ourselves to that conclusion.<\/p>