About a year ago, I took an astronomy class, which was probably the single most rewarding class of my life. Both of my professors for this class worked for NASA for many years, and have published many papers in their field. I learned so many fascinating things about the universe, such as why the sky is blue, and why the moon turns colors (such as red and orange).

When you look up at the stars at night, know that many of the objects that you see are not stars, but actually planets in our own solar system. Some are actual galaxies that only look like stars because of their extreme distance from us. It’s important to know that when looking at any object in the sky, you must take distance into account. The huge distances in space create a very unusual problem – a time problem. If you’re looking at a star that is 10 light-years away, this means that the light of the star takes 10 years to travel to earth (and to our eyes). So, if you’re looking at a star that is 10 million light-years away, it means that the light of that star you’re seeing was created 10 million years ago, and is only now reaching the earth. So looking up at the stars at night is essentially like looking back in time.

For me, learning and observing the solar system is exciting enough without even thinking about the possibility of aliens! However, for those of us who do believe that life exists elsewhere, check out these recent developments. A scientist (a solar physicist) just published an article claiming that he’s discovered fossilized microbes in a very rare type of asteroid. NASA has released a statement about the publication.

Whether or not this finding is true, I still believe in extraterrestrial life, and even after studying under scientists, I haven’t had any reason to change my mind. For me, it’s really just a matter of probability. The Earth exists with perfect conditions for life to evolve, and our planet is perfectly suited to keeping life safe. We have an ozone layer. We are just the right distance from our host star. Everything is great! So why couldn’t it happen again?

There are millions of individual galaxies, each with billions of stars in them. That means there are trillions of stars that could play host to a planet. Up until 10 or 20 years ago, it was believed that we were the only solar system in the universe, because we had never observed a planet orbiting a distant star (we didn’t have the technology to detect them back then). Over the past 3 or 4 years, new technology has shown us over 500 planets (known as “extra solar planets”) orbiting other stars and one even falls within the “goldilocks” zone earth is in. This means that the orbit around its host star is just right, and habitable temperature and liquid water could possibly exist.

Even if the odds of finding life on another planet are .000000000000000000000000000000000001 to 1 (I’m making that number up, btw), it doesn’t negate that there are hundreds of thousands of planets out there. Life exists on our planet, so who’s to say that it couldn’t evolve on one of the millions of candidates throughout the universe?

-Frankie