Friday, March 26, 2010

Life out there...

Usually, I stick to thinking about all the amazing possibilities that exist in our near future, and on our own planet. But today, I just have to ask: Do you think there's life out there? And if you knew for certain that there was, do you think that would change anything about how we live our lives now?

What refreshed this debate in my head was an article not about space, but about Antarctica. This article talks about how a saltwater lake that has been trapped under glaciers for 1.5 million years still manages to support 17 different types of micro-organic life in an oxygen-less environment. It continues to amaze me how life manages to survive literally EVERYWHERE on earth. Here's a nice top 10 of the most inhospitable places life exists.

Now it just stands to reason that in the estimated 10^22 stars in the universe, life has managed to claw its way into existence quite often. Now add to that the recent news that the universe is now 90% bigger than we thought it was. Aint that crazy? Sure, we may never run into the little green men that share our universe, but they're likely out there. Doesn't that make you wonder?

1 comment:

  1. > Now it just stands to reason that in the
    > estimated 10^22 stars in the universe, life
    > has managed to claw its way into existence
    > quite often.

    Does it? Maybe life really *is* so unlikely that it only came to pass once in the entire universe?
    (In which case, it must have been here :-) )

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