Answer 1:
The short answer is "not to the best of our
current knowledge, and Earth is the only known
planet with conditions for life as we know it",
but maybe a long answer is more interesting or
helpful?
We have not found any evidence for
intelligent life in space, yet that is not for
lack of trying. Why are we trying? Well, great
scientists have asked the same question as you,
and the fact that we haven't found aliens or
evidence of their existence or them having
visited Earth is actually known as "Fermi's
paradox" . This name comes from the fact that
the famous physicist Enrico Fermi thought it
highly probable that Aliens should have visited
our planet or solar system already, based on a
few simple calculations. So the fact that they
should have, but haven't, visited, is Fermi's
paradox. His calculations of probability are
based on several assumptions and numbers, some
of which I will outline for you to explore your
question a bit more.
One assumption is that the Earth is a typical
planet in a typical solar system in a common
place of a typical galaxy. Now consider the
inconceivably large size of the universe (check
out
universe
for an attempt at visualizing it). The stars you
can see on a clear night are but a tiny fraction
of what is there: there is an estimation of 200-
400 billion stars in our Galaxy, the Milky Way,
alone. And the number of stars in the visible
universe is estimated to be about that number
multiplied with itself! If one assumes that all
those stars have planets around them, an Earth-
like planet does not seem such an unlikely
occurrence.
Furthermore, if you consider the age of the
universe (billions of years), even the enormous
distances to other stars may seem within the
reach of civilizations that are technologically
just a bit more evolved than ours. The distance
to the closest star (Proxima Centauri) in our
galaxy is about 4.24 light years, and our galaxy
measures around 100 light years across. You may
recall that a light year is the distance light
travels in one year. Fermi considered
interstellar travel as feasible within the next
hundred years. Travel between galaxies may be
another matter (we are now talking millions of
light years), but communication may still be
feasible. So you can get an idea about where
Fermi was coming from.
Now, why have we not found any aliens or
evidence of their existence? One explanation is
that there is something wrong with Fermi's
assumptions; for example, the one assumption
that the Earth is nothing special as a planet.
The more we know about life and how complex it
is and what it needs, the more we learn to
appreciate the special circumstances that our
planet provides and the huge amount of good
chance that has played a part in life and humans
evolving here. Due to the scale of planets
relative to that of stars and the universe, it
is not easy to find out how many and what kinds
of them exist, and this is an ongoing field of
research. Or interstellar space travel may not
be as feasible as Fermi thought, or
civilizations advanced enough to pursue it may
not be interested in such things anymore. There
are many explanations that one can come up with,
and those last two (which I just came up with as
examples) are probably no less strange than many
others that people have investigated. Yet this
is a part of science, in areas where little is
known yet: coming up with ideas and
speculations, and ways to test those ideas.
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Answer 2:
No one knows for sure whether aliens exist.
There are theories suggesting both the absence
and the presence of aliens, but we still don't
have evidence of any intelligent life. For
example, there are so many galaxies with so many
stars with so many planets, it is likely that at
least one of them has intelligent life. This
suggests there should be intelligent life out
there. On the opposite side of the argument, it
is likely that if intelligent life existed, it
would have made machines that can travel and
build copies of themselves. The fact these
machines haven't populated the entire universe
suggests other intelligent life-forms may not be
present. In the end, we have no idea what this
life will look like nor behave, nor what
conditions might be suitable for this life.
Because science only works with observations,
we can never prove there is no other life,
because it is impossible to observe something
that doesn't exist. Consequently, this question
will only ever be answered when we find evidence
of life.
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Answer 3:
It's almost a certainty that alien life
exists, but we have no idea how common it is.
The only place in the universe where we are
absolutely certain is habitable to life is the
Earth. We think the same may be true of some of
the other objects in our solar system, but we're
less sure of that. That there are other Earth-
like planets in the universe is, again, almost
certain, but they could still be quite rare.
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