Question: do you think there is another form of intelligent life somewhere out in the universe?

Katy Mee answered on 21 Jun 2010:

Well for a start it depends how you define ‘intelligent’ life!! I’m certain there is ‘life’ out there but whether there are organisms as intelligent as those we see on Earth is much more difficult to say. I know they recently found methane on Mars, which is almost entirely caused (on Earth) by living things, although some volcanoes do emit methane. The questions is whether that methane is a sign that life has already been and gone on Mars and we’re seeing what Earth might look like in, say, a few billion years time…..or whether it is a precursor to ‘intelligent’ life. (Of course it could be neither of these but i personally think it is related to some current or previous life on Mars).

The difficulty with detecting ‘life’ on other planets is that we are basing all our research on what we understand life on earth to be like. So when we send probes to other planets we’re looking for water, oxygen etc. But there may be something out there that we haven’t even discovered yet that is capable of supporting life. So maybe there’s an equivalent compound on, say Jupiter, that is capable of supporting life in the same way that water is the essential compound to all life on Earth. Perhaps we just haven’t discovered it yet. And if you don’t know something exists, it’s very difficult to look for it!

Our planet is such a small part of the universe that it would be very narrow minded to say for definite that no life exists beyond Earth…..what do you think?