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They are not expecting large-headed, lanky humanoids with oval-shaped black eyes hiding behind a crater on mars; instead they fully expect to find microbial life very soon for a number of reasons. Mainly, we finally are starting to "know where to look, we know how to look, and in most cases we have the technology."
From the article:
[Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA] also described another recent study that used measurements of aurora on Jupiter's moon Ganymede to prove it has a large liquid ocean beneath its icy crust. The findings suggest that previous ideas about where to find "habitable zones" may have been too limited. "We now recognize that habitable zones are not just around stars, they can be around giant planets too," Green said. "We are finding out the solar system is really a soggy place." He also talked NASA's plans for a mission to Europa, another moon of Jupiter with an icy ocean. "I don't know what we are going to find there," he said.
NASA associate administrator John Grunsfeld, said part of what excites him most about the search for life beyond our planet is to see what that life looks like. "Once we get beyond Mars, which formed from the same stuff as Earth, the likelihood that life is similar to what we find on this planet is very low," he said.Grunsfeld said he believes that life beyond Earth will be found by the next generation of scientists and space explorers, but Green said he hopes it is sooner than that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday April 09 2015, @09:46AM
Given the size of the universe and a random distribution,
We don't know that the distribution is random. And if it is (which it might well be) we don't know anything about how densely populated the universe is. So the galaxy could be randomly populated and teeming with LGMs, or randomly populated and mostly empty. No idea.
intelligent life will be so far spread apart
Could. Could be so far spread apart. There could be life within 50 light years. That's not so long as to rule out meaningful contact.
There could even be just one other intelligent species capable of interstellar contact in the entire galaxy, yet still within contact distance.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by Rickter on Thursday April 09 2015, @01:01PM
My bet is on there being very little other intelligent life in the Galaxy. Consider the needs of life on this planet. I understand we only know of one particular combination of conditions that give rise to life, and we don't know what other conditions might do so. But giving what we do know, it seems important that we have a significant amount of water, carbon, oxygen, iron (to protect us from radiation and maintain our atmosphere), a stable start and planet, and the presence of Jupiter to prevent significant bombardment by asteroids without also disrupting the orbits of the inner planets (I saw an article last week that said Jupiter probably formed near the sun, and migrated out to it's current location), a relatively circular orbit, the rise of symbiotic types of life forms (plants and animals) who maintain the atmosphere by breathing in what the other exhales and exhaling what the other needs, not to mention all of the different calamities that have struck in history to not completely destroy life if it does begin, or just wipe out the intelligent life.
Go through each of theses conditions, and it seems exceedingly unlikely for life on other worlds in our galaxy to be common even if some of the attributes above are not common, the coinciding of all of them is probably extremely rare.