One of the biggest question that the humanity has it is if we are or not alone in the universe. An existential doubt and an affliction whose all the scientists and stronomers of the world are trying to give an answer for years. We created telescopes able to look light years far away from us, we are looking at solar systems close and remote, around our galaxy and over, but sometimes we forget about how much astonishing is our small solar system. We still don’t know all the secrets of it and we already look over, towards the Milky Way and the whole Universe, with an ever growing hunger for knowledge. However how many secrets the solar system is still hiding and how many environments could welcome the life and its prosperity. Here you have a small tour towards the discovery which could hide the life.
Mars
The Earth is placed in that area considered livable of a solar system, not too close to the Sun to be incandescent neither too far to be glacial. The right rapport that allows the prosperity of billions of life forms. But we don’t have to forget that not far away from this heaven there are other two planets. We are looking for twins planets around the universe and we don’t remember that we already have one of them, “only” 56 milions of km far away from us, Mars. Mars is always the most observed, studied and romanticized extraterrestrial planet, but it is established that it is a dead planet. Another nowadays indisputable fact, though, is that it wasn’t always dead. On its surface, infact, there were plentiful seas, oceans and lakes, were running down fierce rivers, still observable now, by the numerous riverbeds today dry, that run along the whole red martian crust. Water not completly lost, because the poles are still frozen and, in the hottest period of the year, they melt to remember to the planet the old life. And what about the fleeble atmosphere that surrounds the planet, which, with every probability, many years ago was breathable, like the terrestrial one. A planet that, probably, remember a thriving life and that maybe, with an almost sci-fi work of terraforming, might come back to be flourishing like before.
Venus
In the opposite side, instead, focusing the look towards the Sun, we find one of the planet that, at the first look, appears between the most inhospitable ones, Venus. With its 470 degrees and a pressure 90 times bigger than the terrestrial one, nowadays this planet will destroy every life forms. Numerous theories, though, bring to the conclusion that before this incandescent planet was really similar to the Earth, and, maybe, thriving of life. But what we are looking for aren’t only evidences of past lifes, but the striking discovery of actual life and, about it, it is interesting the theory that to host the life would be the clouds of this inhospitable planet. The analogy that let’s assume that this theory is correct is the fact that the dark stains observed in the Venus’ clouds are really similar to the measuraments made on the planet Earth, about some bacteria found inside our planet’s storms.
Europa
Between the most chatted of the last period there is Europa, one of the Jupiter’s moons. The satellite, infact, has a crust completly frozen, under which it seems that flows a massive ocean of water deep up to 100 km. The surface’s temperature, anyway, are close to the absolute zero and for this reason unlivable, but inside it, could be a milder environment. Finally, it seems that even the breathing and other process for the life as we know it are possible. The presence of extraterrestrial life, in our solar system, is mainly to research in this place.
Encelado and Caronte
Encelado and Caronte are two moons respectively of Saturn and Pluto, that, like for the Jupiter’s satellite, could host the life. This theory is been made considering the presence of liquid oceans under the surface and the chrondite’s rocky formations. Those two elements would give the start to a process called “radiolysis”, making hydrogen and oxygen, considered the life’s roots. Find the life on Encelado and Caronte, so far away from their own star, even in unicellular or anyway elementar form, will radically change the way that the extraterrestrial life’s research took, inverting the basement of those theories, which are exclusively focused on the exploration of the area considered “livable”.
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