Introduction.

In the past 50 years, the advancement of the technology has led to advancement research on the galaxies for any form of life and whether any of the galaxy components can support growth. The last 50 years have redrawn the lines that describe our existence. There has been a discussion in the world that according to how the trend of the world is going, by the time we reach 2050, the planet earth will be overpopulated and thus a need for the search of new home. NASA which is given the mandate to explore the other planets indicated in the Planetary Visions 2050 conference that the best future of the human kind would in the space.

There are thousands of, and this raises the question of whether life can be found in them. Over the last 50 years, there have been an increased collection of materials that are considered to be crucial for the formation of life on bodies as close and as far-flung Rosetta’. There is no proof of any existence of life beyond Earth- either extinct or current. This can be associated with the fact that definitive evidence of life is a high bar to attain because of the use of spacecraft and landers with limited numbers of sensors and detectors.

The Search of the existence of life or support of life has been associated with the aliens with Drakes Equation meant to try and look for signal/ get feedback from messages sent to the other galaxies. It is thus related to the ability of the species in the universe being able to respond/ being literate enough to be able to communicate in return to the messages. It might be possible to find life in other planets but when the mechanism and the point of approach are changed.

Likely Places to Search. ‘

A galaxy is a vast place that will require a lot of exploration to be able to search through the whole of it. Every star has its planet. This makes it hard to search for life. To be able to search for life, the galaxy should be narrowed down to those that indicate the existence of life. This include, Europa, Enceladus, Titan and also beyond our solar system.

Europa.

Europa is a giant Jupiter; It is the next planet beyond Mars in the solar system. According to pictures and data collected by spacecraft, Europa seems to have a layered structure like Earth. Europa just like Earth has a layer of an iron-rich core, a rocky mantle and a crust of ice. The Magnetic field measured gave out figures that suggest that there is a presence of electric current inside it. Photographs also show huge cracks in the ice.

The surface of Europa resembles Earth’s sea ice in Antarctica as by Ligier, Carter, Poulet, Langevin, Dumas, & Gourgeot, (2014, November). The ice on the surface is very young and can be related to the interaction with the reservoir of liquid water. Water vapor has also been found above the Europa South Pole, and it is thought to come from the erupting water plumes. The plumes are yet to be detected by the spacecraft. This indicates that probably that Europa probably has water. It also has a source of heat energy that is produced due to the friction of being pulled toward the Jupiter gravitational field. The exploration also found that there is plenty of radiation around Jupiter that is strong enough too very quickly to destroy any organic compound formed.

Enceladus.

It is the moon of Saturn. The flyby on Enceladus brought to attention the presence of air and thus disqualified it from the icy body previous it was assumed to be. More exploration on it led to the detention of the thermal infrared in the hot South Pole. There is also the availability of the tiger stripe marking around the South Pole which is at 200 degree Celsius warmer than the rest of the moon.  It is assumed that the friction caused by the Saturn gravitational forces means that Enceladus heats up from the inside.

There is also evidence of Plume of material jetting out of the tiger stripes. When the plume material has sampled the gases and particles in it, there was found traces of water vapor, a salty reservoir, and organics. There are also subatomic particles that were detected in the plumes, both in the gases and the particles within it, up to the limit of the instrument. The organic materials cannot be decided whether living creatures made them or not.

The plume data showed that there were excess hydrogen and the detection of tiny grains of nano silica, which is only formed in boiling water. The information pointed out evidence of hydrothermal vents on the seafloor of Enceladus. Hydrothermal vents form at locations where seawater meets magma. Water goes down the cracks into the core, is heated and then comes back out again at force. The hydrothermal vents are teeming with the organism. The organism gets its energy from the nutrients in the mineral-rich fluid. Therefore hydrothermal vents on Enceladus and other planetary bodies are a possible source of life.

Enceladus is thought to harbor a global ocean beneath its icy surface. This was concluded because the core of the moon and the crest are not fixed. Enceladus thus has three ingredients needed to support life. There is no evidence of life at present.

Titan

Found in Saturn. Discovered by Voyager 1. The moon is believed to contain a thick atmosphere that includes methane. This methane was mostly hydrogen, a few percent methanes and a smaller amount of hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane, and acetylene. Titan is thought to have a liquid water ocean beneath the icy surface. It ice crust is probably thicker than that of Europa and Enceladus. Titans also have lakes across its poles. With a temperature of -180 degree Celsius, the lakes cannot contain water. They include super cold ethane and methane (gases found on earth). They act as a solvent that is required to support life.

Most likely forms of life.

Extraterrestrial life is a life that occurs outside Earth and does not originate in Earth. The form of life outside earth may range from simple prokaryotes to even creatures/ being with civilization far more advancement even than humanity. The Drake equation has been used to explain the extraterrestrial life. It speculates that about existing intelligent life outside earth.

The knowledge on the extraterrestrial life has had a significant impact on science fiction and scientific research. The science fiction has been used to express the idea of the science, and thus it has imagined a variety of possibilities and influenced public interest in the extraterrestrial life.

Alien life can exist in a form such as a microorganism. For instance, in Enceladus, the scientist is assuming the presence of the organism in the hydrothermal that gets energy from the nutrients in the mineral. In the different moons where life is thought to exist, several factors make them seem possible like they can support growth. Most of the theories and research show that this body may have existed far longer than even the earth. It can thus be thought that life already lived before or is about to exist.

The Europa which contains similar materials that are found in the hydrothermal vent in Earth may be able to support the life of an organism that does not require the sun energy to survive. Enceladus contain carbon-bearing molecules and is thought that it can sustain growth in the form of microbial. A microbial is any organism, especially which causes diseases or infections. This includes bacteriaarchea and Eukarya. Another type of life that may be thought to exist include plants, animal’s fungi, protest.

The extraterrestrial life form such as Animal might be a rare discovering that will be determined. The reason behind it can be because the bodies that seem to support life lack all the component that is necessary for an animal to survive. Animals have a distinctive nature of adapting themselves to quality. Because of this, there lies a slight possibility that we may find animals that have adopted and able to survive in places such as Europa. In case there exist animals, it would mean they have passed over a long period. For instance, Europa seems like it supported life in the past where there are signs of water paths in it.

The Search of the existence of life or support of life has been associated with the aliens with Drakes Equation meant to try and look for signal/ get feedback from messages sent to the other galaxies. It is thus related to the ability of the species in the universe being able to respond/ being literate enough to be able to communicate in return to the messages.

How to find it.

The best way to look for the existence of life is through searching for signs of life processes rather than life itself. Life-form is based on the Carbon or silicon, uses oxygen for transport like humans, or ingest iron like. The assumption that is being made here is that life in all the galaxy has a few things in common like the use of energy, the transformation of materials, making copies of itself and circulates information of how to make the copies.

If there is a search of materials that are undergoing changes that only living organism can produce might allow us to see beyond what life looks and witnesses what life behaves like, wherever it is in the universe.

To be able to find life beyond earth and be able to understand how that life come in to being, we must first look at the atmosphere of planets like the one that is around TRAPPIST -1. We require to add more in the skies that the available one. The resolution of the telescopes needs to be upgraded as the Hubble Space Telescope has already hit its a maximum resolution.  It should be noted that finding Oxygen in the atmosphere of the planet, and the moon does not mean that there is life.

We should also look at the possibility of using the sun itself to image distant exoplanets. This would take advantage of how mass bend space, turning our star into the lens of the cosmic-sized telescope. This can be implemented through the new solar gravity lens (SGL).

Conclusion

The search for life outside our planet as we know has been going on for over the past 50 years. The idea behind is to know whether there is an existence of another being who is civilized as the human race. The search of life is ongoing, with NASA carrying out various launches into space. There is another three mission that is set to be launched. According to the paper, the existence of life in other dimensions have not been confirmed, but there is still hope.

Theoretically, life can be seen to exist in Europa and Titan. Some space agencies are aiming to collect samples from Mars and return them to Earth for more- depth analysis.

Life requires energy and likely a liquid like water. Water is unique in its freezing and melting properties. Carbon is favorable for growth because of its bonding properties. The Europa, Titan, and Enceladus are attractive candidates in our solar system for the past current or future. Conditions that are on earth and our solar system are a sign that there is life even when the conditions are extreme.

There is no proof of any existence of life beyond Earth- either extinct or current. This can be associated with the fact that definitive evidence of life is a high bar to attain because of the use of spacecraft and landers with limited numbers of sensors and detectors.

References

Ligier, N., Carter, J., Poulet, F., Langevin, Y., Dumas, C., & Gourgeot, F. (2014, November). High spatial and spectral resolution near-infrared mapping of Europa with ESO/VLT/SINFONI. In AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts# 46 (Vol. 46).