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Is there life out there?

Find this session's presentations here.

Life is everywhere on Earth. Living organisms are found from the poles to the equator, from the bottom of the sea till high in the air, from freezing waters to dry valleys to thermal vents till deep below the surface. Since life on Earth is so common and resistant to extreme environments, we think that extra-terrestrial lifeforms, such as micro-organisms, are very likely to exist in the Solar System and throughout the universe. Mars is a candidate and also the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn, which have liquid oceans under the icy surface. We found the chemical building blocks of life everywhere in the Solar System and throughout the universe. We even found dozens of potentially habitable planets orbiting other stars. Several current and planned missions, earthbound and from space, are up to search for signs of life, intelligent and bacterial. Scientists expect to find alien life within a decade. What will be the impact on our lives, our understanding of evolution, our religions, our place in the universe? As SF-author and inventor Arthur C. Clarke stated in the 1940’s: “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying”.

Facilitator

Rob van den Berg Space Expo
Director
Noordwijk
Netherlands

Session speakers

Science Comunicator
Valencia
Spain
What are the key and critical points to design a good game to learn and enjoy with space science and the search for alien life as central theme? Think of age and number of gamers, design of characters, gamification, scientific background, length, rules design, feed-back. What are the reasons and advantages to develop a face-to-face game instead of a videogame or an on-line game
Exhibitions, Shows and Development Director
Toulouse
France
A presentation about the objectives , the type of interaction, and some graphical aspects of the development of exhibits on life in space. The exhibit Martians! explores the possibilities of life on Mars in a funny way. Another exhibition presents the search for life, looking for exoplanets and possible life on them. Meet the Drake equation where the visitor estimates the number of civilizations in the Universe depending on the level of different parameters he has to define
Daniel Folha
Executive Director - Planetário do Porto Centro Ciência Viva
Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço
Porto
Portugal
How can we find planets that have the size, the mass and the temperature of the Earth and for which we will soon be able to know the atmospheric composition. From this we will get the first empirical information about climate, habitability and maybe the first evidence of extra-terrestrial life.
Astronomer, Co-Curator of Space for Our Planet exhibition
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The European Space Agency's missions have been actively searching for traces of life, whether present or past, in the Universe, and this presentation will provide an overview of those efforts. Discover also an exciting interactive tool developed by the European Space Agency: "The Enigma of Life" magic book traces the origins of life on Earth, exploring our solar system and possible new worlds in the process.