Does Life Exist — or Has It Ever Existed — Somewhere Besides Earth?

For millions of years people have wondered if life exists somewhere else other than earth. Although this question continues to remain unanswered, I do believe that other lifeforms may be out in the vast open space. With potentially hundred of billions of galaxies in the universe, and with each of them housing billions of stars, how could you not think that there is not other forms of life? Today, there are more than 1,700 exoplanets discovered just by a single telescope, some of them are even habitable. Kepler is a space observatory launched by NASA to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. Kepler found the first Earth-size planet to orbit in the “habitable zone” of a star, the region where liquid water can pool on the surface. In recent years, the Mars Express Orbiter detected methane in the atmosphere. Methane is a gas requently produced by living things, it could be the result of a microbe. Microbes are single cell organisms to tiny that millions can fit into the eye of a needle. They are the oldest form of life on earth. The universe is far too vast for there not to be other instances of life, outside of earth. There are literally universes upon universes, and we are just a speck in our universe. The ability to detect alien life may still be years or more way, but the quest is underway.