Life On Other Planets

D. Crowley, 2007

Life On Other Planets

• To evaluate information on the existence of life on other planets

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Do Aliens Exist

• Do you think aliens exist? Can you form an argument for / against aliens existing

• You have five minutes to speak about this with a partner, then split into two groups - either the groups which thinks aliens can (do?) exist, or that group that doesn’t think they can exist

Billions of galaxies

• There is more than a billion galaxies in the universe - each galaxy has millions of stars, of which the vast majority have planets orbiting them

• So chances are somewhere in the universe there will be a planet similar to Earth, able to support life (i.e. not too big; not too close / far from star)

• But what about evidence…

Task

• You are going to be split into pairs, then be assigned one of six characters

• You must read your characters views, and pass them on to the class (remember, this is not your personal view, but that of your character)

• Make a list of the evidence you think is solid, and evidence you would not use to base your belief on…

• You have ten minutes before the discussion

Discussion

• Give a brief explanation of your characters view

• Then tell us what evidence you think is solid (and why), and what evidence you would not base a belief on (and why)…

Life?

• So have you changed your mind about aliens existing?!

• To date we have no firm evidence of extra-terrestrial life - why is this evidence crucial?

• But the existence of such a huge number of other planets means, with good probability, that there are other planets like Earth which can support life

• How can we find other life?

Big

• The universe is very very big, so looking for life becomes a big job!

• There are various ways we can look for other signs of life…

• We can send spacecraft to other planets / moons to look for living life or evidence of their existence (e.g. fossils); use telescopes to observe other planets and look for tell-tale signs (such as the atmospheric changes); and use SETI

SETI

• The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) looks for special radio signals which may have been sent from an alien transmitter

• Want to know more - visit www.seti.org

• You can help the search - type SETI @ home in a search engine

• Try the planet 10 world builder - see the ideal type of planet to support life

http://www.solarsystem.org.uk/planet10/