Expert: Philip Stahl - 4/22/2007

Question
Do you believe there is life on other planets? Also if you in 8th grade what debate would you do on in astronomy?

Answer
Hello,

In answer to your first question, yes, I do think life exists on other planets. Statistically, it is just too absurd to think that life is confined only to one planet, Earth. Especially when there are tens of billions of galaxies like the Milky Way - each with 100 billion or more stars.

The more difficult question is whether *intelligent life* exists on other planets - such that it can harvest technology at least to the same degree as humans. I think the odds are at least 50-50 and this is why we have programs such as SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) to try to detect incoming messages from other worlds - IF there are any.

Your 2nd question is much more difficult to address. The reason is that a decent debate presumes enough information on both sides to make it work. In my own experience, it doesn't work well if both sides are not equally informed and the information is *reliable*.

In this sense, most students are unable to really debate anything in astronomy until they first take a course in physical science, or physics.

This means that if you're going to have a debate you need to find a subject where too much extra knowledge isn't required. The only one I've found that works in over twenty five years of basic astronomy education is:

"Should more money be spent on space exploration or weapons?"

This is good because students, even at 8th grade level, usually can form intelligent opinions that don't depend excessively on abstract knowledge or difficult principles (which they may actually get wrong in a debate - like the inverse square law for light)

Hope this helps!