We Asked a NASA Scientist: Do Aliens Exist?

NASA astrobiologist Lindsay Hays takes a stab at answering one of life’s most fundamental questions.
The question of whether we are alone in the universe remains one of the biggest philosophical conundrums of our time. While it seems almost inconceivable that our civilization is alone in the cosmos, the fact still remains that we have yet to see any evidence to the contrary.

For some, scouring the cosmos for signs of alien life has become a life-long passion.

In a recent video (viewable below), astrobiologist Lindsay Hays discusses at length the search for life outside of our planet and exactly where, in our own solar system at least, scientists are looking for it.

Much of the focus has been on looking for signs of microbial life – something that is likely to be far more abundant throughout the universe than complex, sentient beings like ourselves.

“We’ve only explored a tiny fraction of Mars… and that’s only one of the promising bodies to look for life in our solar system,” she said.

“There are icy moons in the outer solar system like Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa that look like they may have subsurface oceans that could be habitable.”

“And that’s just what’s in our solar system. The more exoplanets we find around other stars, the more we learn about how many different environments could exist for life.”

At the end of the day, given the sheer scale of the universe and the number of planets that we now know exist in our own galaxy alone, the likelihood that the Earth is the only planet on which life has emerged seems unlikely to the extreme.

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not,” science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once said. “Both are equally terrifying.”