What would finding no life in the solar system tell us about life in the universe.?

[Moontanman]

If and when we finally explore the entire solar system and we find no life what so ever other than the Earth what would this tell us about life in the universe?

[Zythryn]

That out of 9 planets (sorry, 8) only one has life.

Leaving just about 100 billion galaxies x 1 billion suns (rough guess) x .1 (rough guess of stars with planets) or 1.e+19 left to check.

[Moontanman]

That out of 9 planets (sorry, 8) only one has life.

Leaving just about 100 billion galaxies x 1 billion suns (rough guess) x .1 (rough guess of stars with planets) or 1.e+19 left to check.

 

You don't think that not finding life in places where it could exist says something about the probability of life elsewhere? Mars, Europa, and any other body with liquid water under it's surface, one of the small moons of Saturn is shooting water out of it's interior all the time with organic content. If none of these places have life doesn't this indicate life is an unlikely event?

[CraigD]

If and when we finally explore the entire solar system and we find no life what so ever other than the Earth what would this tell us about life in the universe?

I agree with Zythryn:

That out of 9 planets (sorry, 8) only one has life.

Leaving just about 100 billion galaxies x 1 billion suns (rough guess) x .1 (rough guess of stars with planets) or 1.e+19 left to check.

Though, if you’re precisely counting the number of solar system bodies that might support some sort of life, the number may well be much greater, including many of the great moons of the giant planets, or even the literally countless comets and lesser bodies that might be capable of supporting life of some kind.

 

However, the discovery of a complete absence of absence of life on promising worlds like Mars and Europa might not tell us much about life in the rest of the universe, it would tell us something very significant about life on Earth: that there’s either something essential about extremophile life we don’t understand – something present in extreme environments on Earth, but not in similar extreme environments on other bodies, that’s necessary for them; or that our theories about biological precursors or even simple organisms being spread throughout the solar system by impact ejections are false.

 

Personally, I’m betting that we’ll find extremophile life on mars, and other solar system bodies. We’re getting close, I think, to being able to fly probes with remote lab capabilities adequate to definitively detect extremophile life, in particular via automated DNA sequencers (similar, perhaps, to the 454 Life Sciences' Genome Sequencer 20 System that recently sequenced an entire human genome in less than 2 months – see Nobel Laureate James Watson Receives Personal Genome) capable of actually sequencing the genomes of any such life, and transmitting the data back to us on Earth.

 

These are exciting times.

[Moontanman]

I agree with Zythryn: Though, if you’re precisely counting the number of solar system bodies that might support some sort of life, the number may well be much greater, including many of the great moons of the giant planets, or even the literally countless comets and lesser bodies that might be capable of supporting life of some kind.

 

However, the discovery of a complete absence of absence of life on promising worlds like Mars and Europa might not tell us much about life in the rest of the universe, it would tell us something very significant about life on Earth: that there’s either something essential about extremophile life we don’t understand – something present in extreme environments on Earth, but not in similar extreme environments on other bodies, that’s necessary for them; or that our theories about biological precursors or even simple organisms being spread throughout the solar system by impact ejections are false.

 

Personally, I’m betting that we’ll find extremophile life on mars, and other solar system bodies. We’re getting close, I think, to being able to fly probes with remote lab capabilities adequate to definitively detect extremophile life, in particular via automated DNA sequencers (similar, perhaps, to the 454 Life Sciences' Genome Sequencer 20 System that recently sequenced an entire human genome in less than 2 months – see Nobel Laureate James Watson Receives Personal Genome) capable of actually sequencing the genomes of any such life, and transmitting the data back to us on Earth.

 

These are exciting times. :friday:

 

Yes very exciting times, i would be amazed if we don't find some sort of extremophiles on most of the major planets and moons except the gas giants and i wouldn't discount them out of hand, especially not Uranus and Neptune. Gold was of the opinion we will find life deep under ground on all of the rocky planets and moons except maybe Venus. I will make a prediction here that i hope to live to see either proved or dis proved, I think we will find oil deposits on Mars. If indeed there is life miles under ground in the Earth, Mars should have it, maybe Mercury, all the big moons for sure and if oil is geology reworked by biology then Mars should have it too.

[Zythryn]

You don't think that not finding life in places where it could exist says something about the probability of life elsewhere? Mars, Europa, and any other body with liquid water under it's surface, one of the small moons of Saturn is shooting water out of it's interior all the time with organic content. If none of these places have life doesn't this indicate life is an unlikely event?

 

The only thing it would indicate is that life is not 100% likely.

Personally I do feel they will find indications of current or previous life at the cellular level. Perhaps even more complicated.

But not finding any of such a very small sample (8 planets out of 1.e+19) planets or so, really doesn't say much beyond life is no more than %99.999999999999999999 likely.

[Moontanman]

If life is the inevitable result of chemicals coming together under the correct conditions wouldn't you expect to see life on more than one of the dozens if not hundreds of bodies in the solar system that have water and organics?

[Zythryn]

If life is the inevitable result of chemicals coming together under the correct conditions wouldn't you expect to see life on more than one of the dozens if not hundreds of bodies in the solar system that have water and organics?

 

Only if those dozens if not hundreds of bodies had the correct conditions:)

If we find, after a thorough search, that these other bodies do no hold life, I would conclude that the correct conditions are such that they only exist where we found life (here on earth).

 

Even if you expand the places we look to all moons and asteroids (which is reasonable), you still have life on 1 out of 500,000 (pick any number you want). You still have 100s of billions of other stars in just our galaxy to sample, and billions of other galaxies after that.

1 out of 500,000 is pretty good odds with numbers like that.