Isnt it almost scary?

Question

thinking that there is only 1 planet that can hold life? i mean yea theres a possibility that mars can hold life but what if it cant and this is the only planet capable of holding life? im just curious... =]

Answer 1

There was a time when we were convinced the whole Universe revolved around the Earth .. now we understand the Earth is an 'average' planet revolving around an 'average' star (the Sun) in the outer reaches of one arm of an 'average' galaxy.

This suggests 'we' are 'average' life - but some people (still) think 'we' are the only life in the Universe .... unfortunately the 'alternative' crowd have taken the 'high ground' when it comes to alien life (any-one seen the Grey's stepping out of their UFO's to make another Crop Circle lately ?)

The ONLY thing that could make us 'unique' is our large Moon .. however it is now thought that close encounters between planet sized objects was quite common in the early solar system, and planets with large moons may actually be quite 'average' ..

At the end of the planetary formation epoch the inner Solar System was populated by 50–100 Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos - plainly 'close encounters' must have happened 'all the time' (since only 4 inner planets are left :-) )

These planetoids bumped into one another and merged .. sometimes the 'bump' must have been at just the right angle for bits to have 'bounced off' :-) .. one such (grazing impact) resulted in our Moon ..

Mercury seems to have been hit by a planetoid that nearly destroyed it, Venus may have been hit by one or more that caused it to rotate 'backwards' and Neptune may have been hit by one that flipped it's angle of rotation to the horizontal (Pluto's moon Charon is also thought to have been created as a result of a 'grazing' impact ..)

Answer 2

We are.

Answer 3

we're just now being able to spot planets around other stars....

for all we know, our solar system is the exception (only 1 inhabitiable planet)

Answer 4

I don't think we're special enough to be the only ones,

We have a lot of bad features,

Only a few rare are compassionate and understand,

if there isn't a more complex, kind and intelligent lifeform out there- I'm disappointed in us.

Answer 5

One planet we know of.  There may be some living microbes on mars.  If you count moos, there is life on ours.  It hitched a ride on our spacecraft and somehow survived there.  And there may well be life on Europa and possibly Titan.

But given the number of stars in the universe, I'm sure there is at least one other star that has a planet orbiting it that supports life.

Answer 6

lets look at it this way: there is a planet which supports life, on which you were given a chance to live breathe its oxygen and enjoy its mountains, jungles, seas... isn't it wonderful?

the fact that this planet exists and that we live on it was of a chance of 1 over billions so i guess its kinda cool not scary

Answer 7

in this solar  system.

Answer 8

Statistically speaking there is almost no chance that Earth is the only life sustaining planet in the universe.  There are over a trillion stars in our galaxy alone, most of these stars are stable like our sun and a lot of them have planets orbiting them.

On top of that there are around 400 billion known galaxies!  That is more galaxies in the universe than there are grains of sand on all of the beaches of Earth combined!  And people still wonder whether theres life in the universe other than on Earth?  I think that a better question is "how much life is there?"