Spacecraft Blasts Off To Hunt Alien Life...

[naomi24]

//...on a distant moon.

Europa Clipper will now travel 1.8 billion miles to reach Europa, a deeply mysterious moon orbiting Jupiter.

It will not arrive until 2030 but what it finds could change what we know about life in our solar system.

Trapped under the moon’s surface could be a vast ocean with double the amount of water on Earth.//

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1482xzrge1o

 

 

Would you like alien life to be discovered - and if not, why not?

[Old_Geezer]

Until we have nailed down how non-life turns into life, it's difficult to estimate how special the circumstances have to be. While gut feeling suggests basic lifeforms should be present at many goldilocks places, it may be that it's amazingly lucky to find just one example in an area the size of the visible universe.

[tomus42]

//While gut feeling suggests basic lifeforms should be present at many goldilocks places,//

It isn't gut feeling though. It's logic. Gut feeling is the thing that makes us think we're somehow unique and special.

[Atheist]

tomus. We can't extrapolate from a sample of one, to prove anything. If we find life elsewhere (even on Europa) that would suggest that life is not just a one-off fluke, but is probably all over the place. That's why we are looking at Europa. Note that loads of money is being spent on this flight; someone is very interested indeed and it's not just pure scientists.

[davebro3]

//Gut feeling is the thing that makes us think we're somehow unique//

If and wherever life has formed elsewhere in the universe I hardly think it will have evolved into homo sapiens - so we ARE unique.