Do you think Nasa will discover alien life on Europa, Jupiter's moon?

[Imploded Tomato]

With oceans gushing large amounts of water on a frozen surface, Europa is a top candidate to find extraterrestrial life in our solar system. Do you think Nasa's humanoid robot Valkerie will find aquatic alien life on Europa, Jupiter's moon? Valkerie is set to survey Europa in 2026. As of now, the prototype robot is on a scheduled field test in Alaska where it is melting ice deep within glaciers at about 3 feet an hour. The prototype is about 6 feet tall and a foot and a half in diameter; future versions of Valkerie are predicted to be bigger and will be capable of melting ice at much faster levels.

 

[Bastrophian]

Nope, and why would you want to?

Chances are, anything up there dosent want us to know its up there...[SIZE=13.63636302948px]and the things that do, WE probably dont want them to know WE'RE here...but either way,[/SIZE] if they dont want us to know of their existence, i doubt we will, no matter how deep we dig into the ice....

I think we should focus more on the mysteries of our own planet a little more...like, maybe creating an SUPER Nautilus Submarine...or what ever... that can endure the extreme pressure deep in the ocean, enough to see whats down there....sigh.

Well, thats just me two cents...   

 

[Imploded Tomato]

Nope, and why would you want to?

Chances are, anything up there dosent want us to know its up there...[SIZE=13.63636302948px]and the things that do, WE probably dont want them to know WE'RE here...but either way,[/SIZE] if they dont want us to know of their existence, i doubt we will, no matter how deep we dig into the ice....

I think we should focus more on the mysteries of our own planet a little more...like, maybe creating an SUPER Nautilus Submarine...or what ever... that can endure the extreme pressure deep in the ocean, enough to see whats down there....sigh.

Well, thats just me two cents...   

I don't think aquatic life in Europa would be very much different than on Earth (could be very wrong).

"Chances are, anything up there dosent want us to know its up there..." I doubt life forms on Europa would be capable of producing these kinds of thoughts or ideas unless they are as intelligent as Human beings are, but then again Dolphins are really smart so who knows...

 

[Bastrophian]

I don't think aquatic life in Europa would be very much different than on Earth (could be very wrong).

"Chances are, anything up there dosent want us to know its up there..." I doubt life forms on Europa would be capable of producing these kinds of thoughts or ideas unless they are as intelligent as Human beings are, but then again Dolphins are really smart so who knows...

Well, if you were speaking more along the lines of say, single celled organisms, or anything else lacking advanced sentience or intelligence...sure, i dont see why not.   

 

[Imploded Tomato]

Well, if you were speaking more along the lines of say, single celled organisms, or anything else lacking advanced sentience or intelligence...sure, i dont see why not.   

It would be a plus to find microbial life on Europa, but we've already done so on Mars. Time to find the bigger fish out there and befriend it (or try).

 

[Odaine]

It would be a plus to find microbial life on Europa, but we've already done so on Mars. Time to find the bigger fish out there and befriend it (or try).

'Time to find the bigger fish'

We could literally find intelligent sharks with legs and arms.

I'm not sure it's time yet.

 

[The Stranger]

What if the intelligent life we find isn't more advanced than us? We could be the all-powerful technologically advanced aliens. I hope life exists somewhere else in the universe, I really do.

Europa can be a pretty dangerous place, what with its highly radioactive and unstable surface. Let's hope the lil' guy succeeds in his mission.

 

[whitesphere]

I personally believe any intelligent aliens who exist, whether on Europa or elsewhere, could easily choose to hide themselves.

After all, if any aliens either observed our TV signals or observed human behavior on Earth, they would know as a species we are a long way from overcoming our innate tribal hatred and hostility for anyone who is Other, even if that's separated by religious beliefs that are very little different (Ireland).  Let alone huge areas of the planet that have constant ongoing hostility (the Middle East).  And certainly any human who looks markedly differently than others (i.e. different races) is treated profoundly differently.

If they are advanced enough technologically to visit Earth, the odds are our weapons would be no threat to them.    If so, they clearly are not conquest-oriented, or the "war" would go faster than Bambi vs Godzilla (with us being Bambi).

Therefore, I assume they are hiding themselves, not out of fear, but because they don't want our civilization to self-destruct itself in a "war" against vastly superior technology.  And if we didn't, our civilization would still implode from the profound shock waves that finding intelligent other-worldly life would bring, from economic to religious and political chaos.

So, I hope we don't find intelligent life on other planets until we, as a civilization and species, are truly ready for the shock.  If anything, I think sci-fi helps this tremendously by introducing people to the idea of other-worldly intelligence and perhaps on some level preparing them for an eventual friendly meeting.

 

[Scinaya]

I think bacterial or other unicellular organisms might be found. Marks of such have been found on some asteroids, even though no hard evidence as the organisms themselves. We'll see :>

I don't think the OP even talked about intelligent life... It is unlikely there is anything that complex in so harsh conditions. Even if there was, there is no reason it would have intelligence anyway comparable to ours. Not worse nor better maybe, but very different. If that was the case, it'd be even difficult to determine is it intelligence or not.

 

[The Stranger]

Didn't we find fossilised bacteria and organic molecules on a meteorite that struck Antarctica? The meteorite was from Mars because it contained traces of Martian atmosphere.

 

[Milennin]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they would find some sort of life below that layer of ice, but who knows. I doubt it'd be anything big or 'intelligent', though.

 

[Zevia]

Not my original concept, and I couldn't find the video wherein this gets mentioned, but there's a musician who's just kind of talking while idly strumming his guitar onstage, and he talks about sitting out and looking up at the stars with an astrophysicist friend one night. He asks about meeting alien life.

I'm paraphrasing, but effectively, the astrophysicist mentions the notion that the universe is some 13.8 billion years old. We've been actually adventuring out into space for about 50 years. So for the entirety of the universe's existence, we've been able to communicate with it in any form for about 0.000000003% of the universe's existence. But let's assume we'd been able to communicate with other species for the entirety of our recorded history - 5000 years. That's still only about 0.0000003% of the universe's existence. So even if there have been other space-faring or very intelligent species of life, the odds of them existing, communicating, and being space-faring at the same time of existence as us is effectively 0.

Not to mention the additional unlikelihood that, even if they DID exist at the same time as us, the universe is so incredibly vast that the odds of them being anywhere in our galactic neighborhood is also insanely slim.

So the odds of intelligent life existing in the same area as us is very slim, and the odds of intelligent life existing at the same time as us is very slim, but putting both together, it's even more unlikely. The most likely answer is that at any given point in time, an intelligent species is probably the only one of its kind throughout its civilization, and we are very alone out there.

Not to say it's impossible, of course, but I'd be willing to bet that the human species will never interact with another form of life like ours in any way at any point in our existence. Which makes it that much more important that we eventually learn to function as a cohesive planet instead of a long list of divided nations.

"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."

 

[Tsukihime]

It would be a plus to find microbial life on Europa, but we've already done so on Mars. Time to find the bigger fish out there and befriend it (or try).

lol it is more likely that our governments will try to conquer them and take their resources.

 

[Scinaya]

Didn't we find fossilised bacteria and organic molecules on a meteorite that struck Antarctica? The meteorite was from Mars because it contained traces of Martian atmosphere.

There was marks of nanobacteria in the stone of the meteorite, at least such has been the case with the other meteorites. Not fossiles, since the single cells are so tiny, they do not fossile well. There is marks though they leave to the stone... I don't know the specifics how those are evaluated, though. One of the problems is also, the nanobacteria are still debated in biology too. Some do not consider them a valid form of life as they are way tinier than the tiniest archaea that have been found. Probably also finding and evaluating the marks they leave up is tricky because of the nanometric scale of the evidence.

I don't think there is consensus yet, if the evidence was valid enough sadly. It'd be exciting though!