Are we alone in the universe, or are we just one of the innumerable intelligent races? This question has haunted scientists for ages. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was widely believed that life existed all over our solar system. Famous astronomer William Herschel was convinced of life on the sun. When technology pervaded the upcoming centuries, we saw that our solar system is a much lonelier place. Today, though, there are many different spacecrafts looking for other life.
The Kepler Space Telescope was leading the search for habitable planets. It has found 132 confirmed planets and has 2,740 planet candidates. While these numbers of planets may seem high, there are many other planets still to be found. Kepler also only searched a very small part of our sky. The main goal of Kepler was to find exoplanets, or planets out of our solar system, that can harbor life. So far, the identified planets most like earth in size and still in the habitable zone are Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e, and Kepler-62f. There are also many smaller projects looking at different parts of the sky for habitable planets. While the distances of these planets are in light years, a much closer possibility of past life may still hold true.
Curiosity, a Mars rover, is searching for the remnants of life on early Mars. So far it has identified flowing streams of water! These may be dry now, but back when they did flow, life could have flourished. So far Curiosity has already accomplished the goal of proving that water was once on Mars. It is continuing its route to go to Mt. Sharp, a nearby mountain. Hopefully the rover will find evidence of past life.
Other possibilities of life in our solar system include the moon of Saturn, Titan. Titan has been explored very minimally, yet the Huygens Probe landed and explored the surface for a small time. The moon has all the right materials to one day harbor life except it lacks water vapor because all of its water is ice. Some scientists still think that Titan is a possible host for microbial life. Scientist Sarah Horst also reported finding amino acids, the building blocks for proteins, and the five nucleotide bases, the building blocks for DNA and RNA. While life now on the moon may be not as likely, in a few billion years the sun will be much larger and therefore will make life very likely by melting the ice.
The universe is a very big place. It is almost 100% likely to be infinite. Therefore the chances for other life are almost guaranteed. A greater question is will we ever get to meet these aliens? In our day and age the answer is no, but in the times of our great, great, great grandchildren it could be a possibility. So next time you hear on the news reports of aliens, there is no need to worry.