Is Life on Other Planets Possible?

Image Credit: NASA

We all know that in the past few years, the search for life on other planets has been a highly discussed topic. There are so many questions to be answered: How many other planets have life? Could they support human life? Are there species like us on other planets? The answer to most of these questions is probably 'no,' but that may be because we were looking in the wrong places. In a study published on January 16th, 2015, a group of astrophysicists from the University of Toronto have revealed that planets outside of our solar system could be hospitable to life.

Before this discovery, scientists thought that these planets, called extrasolar planets or exoplanets, always showed the same side to the star they're orbiting, in a situation they call rotational lockup. This fact rules out the idea that there could be life on one of these bodies. Half the planet would be a gigantic desert, while the other side would be locked under a huge layer of ice, making it ridiculously inhospitable to any sort of living thing.

Exoplanets orbit very dim stars - usually orange or red dwarfs - and since they give off less energy
than our own sun, planets have to stay very close to their stars if they want to stay warm. The closer a planet is to its star, the stronger the tidal forces are, which cause tidal locking and force the planets into rotational lockup.

Image Credit: NASA

However, the scientists who conducted the most recent study have brought us good news - exoplanets do, in fact, rotate quite normally as they orbit their stars.They came to this conclusion by creating a 3D climate model that predicts the effects of a planet's atmosphere on the speed of rotation, and therefore on its climate. Their findings allowed them to conclude that most extrasolar planets should be able to support an atmosphere very similar to our own, which means that the majority of a star's light would reach the surface of the planet and provide fairly balanced heating.

Jérémy Leconte, the leader of the study, said that the thin atmosphere of these far away lands could allow them to support liquid water, which makes the idea of extraterrestrial life more likely. He was still hesitant to confirm the idea of other life, as many studies will be needed in order to commit to that idea. He says that "Whether this new understanding of exoplanets' climate increases the ability of these planets to develop life remains an open question."

What do you think? Would you be happy to know that there are aliens on another planet? I've been afraid of E.T. since I was about three years old, so I'm not too keen on the idea of extraterrestrials, but other types of life could be cool. It will likely be decades until we know for sure if there is life on planets other than Earth, but the concept is definitely intriguing.