• Question: I heard that aliens wil invade our planet soon! What the heck! Gee, I'm so scared, what happens if they abduct us and our fellow minions?! Do you think they'll be kind enough to let us fly their spaceships???

    Asked by jess98xx to Davie, Gemma, James P, James V, Nuala on 26 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      Hi jess98xx

      While I do believe that somewhere out in the universe there are other species living who are advanced enough to go into space, I don’t think they’ll visit us for a long time. We have been searching the skies for 40 years with projects such as SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) which is the USA, we are yet to find any. We are finding more and more stars with planets which could sustain life, but they are so far of away it would take thousands of years to reach.

      So, other life on other planets are having the same problems as us, trying to find out if they are alone and if not where this life is. So I think we are safe for now!

    • Photo: James Verdon

      James Verdon answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      Hi jess,
      Haven’t you heard – they’re already here and posing as scientists on I’m a Scientist!!!!

      Kidding. So far we’ve found no evidence for extra-terrestrial life. Not even bacteria or anything. Personally, I’d be surprised if at least some form of life is out there – singled celled bacteria type things. I also reckon that it’s likely that more complex, multicelled life is out there as well.

      However, that does not mean that there will be life forms intelligent enough to make spaceships and send messages to the stars. Lets face it, it took 4.5 billion years of evolution before we appeared, and we’ve only been capable of sending out messages and satellites for about 50 years.

      There’s no innate drive in evolution to create super-intelligent life. We like to think we are the pinnacle of evolution. However, evolution of intelligence, beyond that needed to stay alive and find food (say what you might expect from an ape, monkey or dolphin), might only be selected for in certain very special scenarios that could easily never happen on other planets.

      So even if life is out there, it might not be intelligent enough to build space ships to come find us.

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