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Credit: Esa/Hubble & Nasa
We live in a golden age to explore space. Scientists collect huge amounts of new information and scientific evidence at a record pace. However, the old question remains without an answer: Are we alone?
New telescope techniques, including satellite tools such as James Web telescopeWe enabled us to discover thousands of external planets that could be housing and that could support life similar to that on Earth.
Gravitable wave detection devices I opened a new space to explore space by discovering the distortions of the time caused by black holes and millions of light years.
Commercial space projects They accelerated these developments, which led to an increasingly sophisticated spacecraft and reusable missiles, indicating a new era in space exploring.
Osiris-Rex mission in NASA He successfully landed on the Beno asteroid when he was 207 million miles from the ground and restored rock samples and dust.
Many countries have developed the ability to spread robots the moon Mars, with plans to send humans to these heavenly bodies in the future.
The central driver for all these ambitious endeavors is still the main question about whether life is present – or it exists – anywhere else in the universe.
Life identification
The planet Earth as it appears from space on the black background. | Credit: NASA/Nawa
Life identification is an amazing challenge. While intuitively realizes living organisms that they enjoy life, a careful definition remains out of reach. Dictionaries offer different descriptions, such as the ability to grow, reproduce and respond to stimuli.
However, even these definitions can be mysterious.
The definition is more comprehensive of life as a Self -equivalent chemical system It is able to process information and maintain a state of low entropy with a little disorder or randomness.
Living organisms constantly require energy to maintain their molecular regulation and maintain their very organized structures and functions. Without this energy, life will quickly go down to chaos and honor. This definition includes the dynamic and complex nature of life, focusing on its ability to adapt and develop.
Life depends on Earth, as we now understand it, on an interaction DNA, RNA and proteins. DNA is a life scheme, which contains the genetic instructions needed to develop, survive and multiply the organism. These guidelines are converted into messages that direct protein production, which is the work of the cell responsible for a wide range of functions.
This complex system for DNA repetition, protein synthesis and cellular processes – all of this depends on long chains of carbon atmosphere – is essential to life on Earth. However, the universe may be housing the models of life based on completely different principles and biomass.
Something other than carbon
Explain a large rock red in the bottom of the heat, and flies across space towards Earth, with stars in space in the background. | Credit: European Space Agency
Life can be used elsewhere as different elements such as building blocks. Silicon, with chemical similarities with carbon, It was suggested as a possible alternative.
If they exist, silicone -based life may appear unique properties and adjustments. For example, they may use silicone -based structures to obtain support, similar to bones or shells in carbon -based living organisms.
Although Silicon -based living organisms have not yet been found on Earth, silicone plays an important role in many current forms of life. It is an important secondary component for many plants and animals, and serves structural and functional roles. For example, the diatoms, a type of algae found in the ocean, are characterized by the walls of glass cells made of transparent silicon dioxide.
This does not make Silicon -based life, but it proves that silicone can actually serve as a brick of the organism. But we still do not know whether the Silicon -based life forms exist, Or how it looks like.
The origins of life on the earth
A look at the night sky with a starry sky in the background and many meteorites that fly across the atmosphere, appear as white stations, with trees and vegetable life in the foreground. | Credit: Kenneth Brandon
There are competing hypotheses on how life appears on Earth. One is that the daughters of life were It was delivered to meteorites or in meteorites. The other is that these basic building blocks gathered automatically through geological chemistry in the early environment of our planet.
Meteork was already I found to carry organic moleculesIncluding amino acids, which are necessary for life. It is possible that organic molecules are formed in the distant space and then brought to the Earth by meteorites and asteroids.
On the other hand, geochi operations on early Earth, such as those that occur in Warm small ponds Or in the heat holes in the depth of the ocean, it can also provide the conditions and components necessary for life.
However, no laboratory has yet been able to present a comprehensive road and some to the formation of RNA, DNA and the first cellular life on Earth.
Many biological molecules are predominant, and this means that they are present in two forms are two mirrors, such as left and Yemeni hands. While both the left and Yemeni molecules are usually produced naturally in equal quantities, recent analyzes of the seizures have revealed a slight lack of consistency, in favor of the left shape by up to 60 percent.
This contrast is also observed in the organic molecules derived from space in all vital molecules on Earth (proteins, sugars, amino acids, RNA and DNA), indicating that it can arise from a slight defect in space, which supports the theory that life on Earth originally.
Life opportunities
A view of the spiral galaxy, which resembles black clouds that revolve around a blue center. | Credit: Esa/Webb, Nasa & CSA, J , CC by-nc -f
The slight imbalance in Chirality observed in many organic molecules can be an indication that life on Earth has arisen from the connection of organic molecules by life outside the earth. We can be the descendants of life that grew up elsewhere.
the Drake equationThe astronomer Frank Drake developed in 1961, provides a framework for estimating the number of civilizations that can be discovered inside our galaxy.
This equation includes factors such as the composition of stars, part of the stars with planets, and part of those planets in which smart life may appear. An optimistic estimate indicates the use of this formula 12500 smart, smart civilization It may be found in the Milky Way alone.
The main argument of life outside the earth is still a possibility: looking The huge number of stars and planetsIt seems unlikely that life will not arise elsewhere.
The possibility that humanity is the only technological civilization in the universe that can be observed is less than One in 10 billion trillion. In addition, the chance of developing civilization on any one -based planet is better than one out of every 60 billion.
With an estimated 200 billion trillion star in the universe that can be observed, it is likely that the presence of other technological species is likely to be, and perhaps even within the Milky Way galaxy.
