/sci/ - Science & Math

>>8911553
1) There's a lot of other planets. Like trillions upon trillions upon trillions of them - cuz there's a whole lotta other galaxies (trillions upon trillions of them), and all observations indicate that planets seem to be the rule for stars, rather than the exception.

2) We've some vague ideas as to the requirements for life. We know that those requirements not only can occur elsewhere, but are more likely to occur more often, and recur more often, in other solar systems. (Short lived yellow dwarves are not the best stars for this around. Red dwarves are, and they are much more common, as well as more likely to have rocky planets.)

3) We're kinda out in the sticks of our own galaxy. There's a lot more potential life sustaining stars towards the core than out here on the rim.

4) The only thing unique about our solar system, is that we are in it. There's nothing otherwise terribly unusual about this solar system.

Ergo, regardless of how rare it might be, there's almost certainly life on other planets. That's the only "logical" conclusion you can come to with the data we have.

Now there's a question as to whether there is any other life in our galaxy, but all the data we do have points to that being quite likely as well.

Intelligent life, as we would recognize it, is quite another bag of dildos however. We maybe the only such in this galaxy, at least. In which case, we may never encounter any such, assuming FTL isn't a thing, which it probably isn't. But when you bring civilizations into the mix, there's a whole lot more unknowns.

I mean we can't say anything with 100% certainty, we don't even know why the damn corona is so hot or what exactly ~90% of the universe is made out of... But given what we do know about so many aspects surrounding this, you can say there is life on other planets with as much certainty as you can make any other unverified claim in science.