Extraterrestrial Life Essay Example

Humans have always been wildly fascinated about the possibility that extraterrestrial life could, does currently, or has existed elsewhere in the universe. This is a subject that has been questioned by humankind for at least 2000 years. Lucretius, a Roman poet from the first century B.C., had suggested that “just as life originated by spontaneous chemical interactions on Earth, ‘we must acknowledge that such combinations of other atoms happen elsewhere in the universe to make worlds such as this one…. there are other worlds in other parts of the universe, with races of different men and different animals (Hobson quoting Lucretius, 2006).’” It is thought by many anthropologists that the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe would completely change our world’s sense of self. We would no longer be alone; our understanding of existence would change exponentially. The Copernican view, suggests that Earthlike conditions elsewhere should lead to intelligent life elsewhere. This is based on the premise that the principles of nature are the same everywhere in the universe. Scientists have estimated that there are about 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Observations have shown that about 50% of the stars in our sun’s area, are not a single body of burning gases, but multiple bodies of burning gases. The ideal conditions for planet formation do not occur in the clusters of stars, which appear to be a single star. Planet formation is most likely to occur in single body stars. Of the single stars, there are many of them that are not good for planet formation in that they burn too brightly, and are entirely too massive; ultimately, they burn up their fuel fast, not allowing enough time for planets to form. Stars that are much smaller often burn very dimly. For life to occur, a planet would have to orbit very close to the star, to ensure that the climate is warm enough for life to be sustainable. When planets orbit a star, the star