• Question: Is it possible to sustain life on other planets?

    Asked by Mia to Chris, Josh, Rebecca, Rob, Susan on 16 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Susan Cartwright

      Susan Cartwright answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      Life like ours, possibly underground on Mars. Not elsewhere in the solar system.
      Planets around other stars may be capable of sustaining life, but as yet we don’t know enough about them to be sure.
      Life unlike ours, based on different chemical reactions – biologists disagree about how possible that might be. If it is possible, Titan, the large moon of Saturn, is a possibility – it has an atmosphere (of nitrogen) and lakes (of liquid ethane), but is too cold for our biochemistry.

    • Photo: Rebecca Dewey

      Rebecca Dewey answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      Absolutely – life could take so many forms that we don’t know what it would look like though. There are planets other than earth (and don’t forget there are moons too!) that could support some sort of bacterial life form and they might find a way to advance and become intelligent – we can’t think how they would do it, but life often finds a way!

      Also, there are hundreds and thousands of planets outside our solar system. Some of them we have been able to detect, but others we haven’t yet, but we’re sure there are loads of other planets. Any one of them might have life on it.

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