As I understand, the moon Europa has relatively high potential for life because of its liquid water ocean and energy source. Are there any other strong candidates in our solar system?
None. Mars may have had life long ago. Other than the Jovian moons, we won’t find it anywhere today.
I suspect we may still find microbial life on Mars; we’ve demonstrated all of the requirements for it, and life exists in very, very inhospitable places on Earth.
Venus would be an extreme long shot. Mercury even more so. Other than that, the outer planets are gas giants. Sagan speculated there might be life even there, but realistically, you’d have to give up on planets and go for the moons.
Isn’t Titan generally considered a possibility? It certainly used to be. It does not seem to have water, but it has plenty of liquid (liquid methane) and plenty of organic chemistry.
Also, I am fairly sure that life of some sort exists now on Mars remains very much a live possibility, and the findings of the Mars rovers make it more, not less, likely. There are not going to be little green men, but there very well may be subsurface unicellular organisms, perhaps especially in the polar regions, which are not yet explored at ground level. It is confirmed, now, that there used to be surface water, and this makes it much more likely that ther could still be subsurface water in significant amounts.
Yeah, could maybe be something living in/under the polar ice on Mars.
The saturnine moon Enceladus is another candidate, with liquid water underneath a frozen surface.
The upper atmosphere of Venus is actually kind of nice, and might have enough of the right chemicals to support some microbial life.
I still hope that eventually Humanity will discover Jovian life forms that live floating in the atmosphere of that giant planet. There are probably various zones as you delve deeper into the incredibly thick and complex atmosphere some of which might well support a form of life.
I wasn’t aware until recently (believe it or not) that one of my favorite scientists of all time, Dr. Carl Sagan, posited this form of life. Somehow, the idea had migrated to my cadre of friends (SF fanatics all) and we thought it was OUR idea. But still, the concept is fascinating to me.
Mars probably has microbial life deep beneath the surface near the polar regions where the scant amount of water might accumulate. Venus has no chance for life as we know it, since the surface conditions are far outside the bounds of even the most extremophile bacteria in Terra’s undersea smokers. Mercury is an airless ball of rock and if it has life then Luna probably does as well.
But, our best bet is Europa. We should be sending probes there now.
“Attempt no landings there.” Pretty much says it all…
Missed the edit.
By ‘probes’ I mean a lander of some sort. I know we have had flybys already. An orbiter like EJSM/Laplace which was cancelled 11 years ago would be a great start. Then landers.
But, it costs too much. And shucks, it isn’t cool enough. Instead we aim for Mars before we even have a real space station. This is what happens when you leave politicians, lawyers and thieves in charge of your budgets for interplanetary missions. No real infrastructure or planning can be executed in such an environment.
And that is a shame.
Who is aiming for Mars? Other than China?
Edit- oh, probes. Yeah. Mars is cheaper than the Jovian moons. Faster too.
I know it’s an outside shot, but I have a suspicion that we may have put it there ourselves, via not-quite-sterilized landings.
That would be exciting news, imho. Step Zero of our future terraforming program.
I like the idea of colonizing other worlds with life, assuming we aren’t wiping out indigenous life in the process.
Planting some cyanobacteria and lichens and checking back periodically to see if they adapt and thrive would be a pretty interesting experiment to follow.
Well currently there is no planet with a high possibility for life. Mars may have in the past, Eurpopa may now and Titian could possible. No other body in the system ought to have life.
Mars has a pretty good chance. Anyone who has written off Mars already is making a foolish mistake, I say.
The upper atmosphere of Venus has a good chance, and there is some chemical evidence that life may very well be teaming in the upper atmosphere of Venus. Of course, how it all stays up there without falling down is the main problem with that theory. From Wikipedia:
The chemical data from Venus, to me, is very exciting.
Earth’s upper atmosphere is teeming with bacteria just chilling out at the edge of space. Venus likely started out Earth-like, possibly with its own liquid water oceans, before the Sun got too hot and boiled it all away. If life appeared in that brief time window (at the same time it did on Earth), then it’s possible it could have made its way to the top of the atmosphere while the ground became sterilized.
The Soviet space program never even pretended to sterilize its probes and it had three landers on Mars.
Cite for this? I would not expect things as large as bacteria to stay airborne in the thin atmosphere up there.