• Question: Do you think other life forms out there are intelligent enough to create spaceships?

    Asked by kevjin19 to Neil on 13 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Neil Bowles

      Neil Bowles answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Hmmm, well its a pretty big universe so yes, I think there are likely to be intelligent life forms out there who can also make space ships.

      If they’d ever make it to Earth is a completely different matter though as the distance between the stars are so vast (it will take the fastest human built spacecraft (Voyager 1 I think) tens of thousands of years to get even close to the nearest star).

      Detecting other civilisations by their radio transmissions or similar is much more likely, and this is known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI. If you want a feel for how likely, or not, alien civilisations are something called the Drake equation is good place to start, and quite thought provoking….

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

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