Life on Other Planets?

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Life on Other Planets?

Brittni Cebulak

            You look out at the star-filled nighttime sky. There is a new moon on this night—so the pinpoints of light of the Milky Way galaxy seem brighter, more crisply cut into the horizon. All you see are stars—trillions upon trillions of stars, the exact number no one knows. Then, as the dawn breaks and the stars begin to fade into the multi-colored beauty of the morning, a previously unthought-of question begins to gnaw at the very foundation of your soul:

Could one of those stars be a sun for another “Earth” billions, trillions of light-years away from us?

The mathematical prospect of infinity was created to take account for a “never-ending” universe where “anything is possible, but not probable.” Still, there are numerous complicated, difficult to explain science and math explanations that offer us reasons why we should not believe that life is housed on other planets—especially intelligent life.

Still, I have concocted a counterargument against all of those explanations and equations of probability that I do not, nor wish to, understand:

As nothing but mere humans, we are ignorant to knowledge in the matter of the universe. Sure, we know about the moon, the planets within the solar system, the asteroid belt, and the stars in our galaxy . . . but what do we know outside of this? We have no idea how big “outer space” really is, where it ends, where it begins, or where we are located within the grand scheme of its entire design. In essence, we know NOTHING. With that being said, I now have a few questions of my own:

As humans placed upon this planet by highly debatable means that will not be discussed here, we were not instilled with the knowledge of our most expansive surroundings. Mankind did not even know of the existence of theAmericasuntil a little over five hundred years ago—and the entire history of humans spans the time of thousands of years. With this in mind, if we were not even aware of a land mass on our very own planet, imagine the possibilities of what could be out in the great beyond of outer space.  Maybe our future generations will acquire some additional knowledge in five hundred years.Why do scientists have the authority to say that there is not life on other, exceedingly distant planets? Where is their proof, besides the made-up mathematical equations that are based on theoretic—not factual—scenarios?

Source:http://www.science20.com/news_releases/the_mathematical_probability_of_life_on_other_earth_like_planets