Is there life in Space?

News | The Solar System and Beyond by JPL - NASA

Have you ever watched sci-fi movies where there are aliens or extraterrestrial life, or maybe you remember watching E.T., Star Wars, Space Jam or Home as a child? But even now, the search for extraterrestrial life goes outside of the movie theater, it is actually happening outside of Earth's atmosphere. Scientists have been searching for planets that could possibly be home to life for years now, and the question there asking is, is there life in space? Is life in space even possible? The answer is yes. Sci-Fi movies are known for their outrageous ideas, but life in space is actually entirely possible, even if we don't find it in the next 20 years. Scientists have discovered thousands of planets and a good handful of them are a possibility for being a home to life.

Since the launch of NASA's Kepler mission, thousands of planets in our universe have been found by using the Doppler and transit techniques. As of mid-January 2016, scientists had discovered over 2,000 planets. While looking through these new planets, scientists are looking for a planet in it's Goldilocks zone, the zone where liquid water can be found on the surface of a planet, is big enough to have gravity, but not too big, a rocky planet, orbiting a sun-like star and one with the right atmosphere. This atmosphere would be close to the atmosphere of Earth. According to scientists and astronauts have predicted that there are 40 billion planets in their Goldilocks zone and 11 billion of them can be orbiting a sun-like stars. Meaning that they are orbiting yellow, white or red stars, otherwise known as an M, K, G or F star. That leaves us with 11 billion planets that can possibly support life.

11 billion is a huge number, there is a very large chance that at least one of these planets has some form of life, even if it is just a type of bacteria. The universe is a very vast place, we are only a speck within it. With our new technology and ability to find more planets as faster, a discovery is on the horizon. They have been finding more and more planets over the years and have been able to make great cutting-edge technology that can better detect planets through the "noise" cause by atmospheres and space. After all of these new discoveries and predictions, we have a lot of potential life carrying planets on our hands. Lets just hope that if we find extra-terrestrial life it won't end in an invasion.