Life Are we alone? Part 1

 Life Are we alone?

Science has a promising early solution: there are many planets in the cosmos, many of which have parallels to our own. The quest for life beyond Earth is really only just getting begun. However, there is a great deal that is unknown.

Thousands more planets outside of our solar system have been confirmed by ground and space-based observations. There are probably trillions in our galaxy. However, scientists have not yet found any proof of life outside of Earth. Is it simple and common to start life in the cosmos? Or is it exceedingly uncommon?

Questions outnumber solutions.

We are the only species to have discovered one fact about the universe in the thousands of years that humanity has been contemplating it: planets are abundant in the stars beyond our Sun. They exist in a wide range of shapes and sizes, with the majority being roughly the size of Earth. However, finding an answer to this question only leads to new inquiries, as is the case with most scientific inquiries: Which of these exoplanets, if any, is home to life in any form? Just how quickly does life begin? How long does it last,

Where are they all?

The "Fermi paradox" is a term that describes the unnerving quiet of the cosmos. Where is everyone? was a famous question posed by physicist Enrico Fermi. The universe's billions of years of existence give intelligent, technological lifeforms plenty of time to travel around the galaxy, even at slow travel speeds. So why is the universe so quiet?

The much-discussed Drake Equation, a series of numbers that may one day reveal the number of sentient civilizations we may anticipate to find, has had some of its terms filled in by exoplanet discoveries during the past two decades. The equation itself gives us hope that we may someday find the solution, but the majority of its terms—the percentage of planets with life, with intelligent life, and with observable technology—remain unfilled. Compared to Fermi's quiet, it seems at least a little more optimistic.

In our quest for life, we have reached a fork in the path. In the Milky Way galaxy, we have discovered thousands of planets, many of which are within the size range of Earth and orbit their stars in their "habitable zones" (the distance from the star at which liquid water may exist on the surface). We know there are undoubtedly trillions of planets in the galaxy. Our ground-based and orbiting telescopes, as well as our remote sensing technology, continue to advance. However, the only life we are aware of so far is right here at home. We are currently gazing into space and hoping for a response.