When people imagine where alien life might be, they tend to look outward. Exoplanets. Distant star systems. Some half-mythical planet around a star we\u2019ll never visit.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the strange truth most people never sit with. Scientists think life might exist right here, in our own solar system.<\/p>\n
Not little green men. Not Star Trek. We\u2019re talking microbial life, the kind that quietly runs everything on Earth. And there are a handful of places it could be hiding right now, possibly waiting for us to look hard enough.<\/p>\n
Here are five of them.<\/p>\n
1) Mars<\/p>\n
The most obvious candidate, and still one of the most compelling.<\/p>\n
Mars today is cold, dry, and brutal. But billions of years ago it had rivers, lakes, even an ocean.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The question is whether anything is alive there now. Some scientists think microbial life<\/a> could survive in subsurface lakes detected beneath the ice caps, shielded. We won\u2019t know for sure until we drill. But Mars remains the planet most likely to give us our first answer.<\/p>\n 2) Europa<\/p>\n This is, for many astrobiologists, the most exciting place in the solar system.<\/p>\n NASA\u2019s Europa Clipper mission<\/a> is now on its way to investigate, and a recent NASA study found that signs of life could survive just under the surface ice<\/a>, despite the radiation. Future landers might not have to dig deep.<\/p>\n If anything is down there, it would represent a separate origin of life from ours. Which would change everything we think we know about how common life is in the universe.<\/p>\n 3) Enceladus<\/p>\n In 2005, the Cassini spacecraft found plumes of water vapour shooting out of the moon\u2019s south pole. Beneath its icy shell sits another global ocean, and the plumes are essentially samples of that ocean being launched into space for free.<\/p>\n Since then scientists have found evidence that the bottom of the ocean contains molecular hydrogen<\/a>.<\/p>\n 4) Titan<\/p>\n Saturn\u2019s largest moon is the strangest world in the solar system.<\/p>\n It has a thick nitrogen atmosphere, weather, lakes, rivers, and a hydrologic cycle. Except instead of water, the rain and rivers are made of liquid methane and ethane. It\u2019s the only place beyond Earth where stable liquid exists on the surface.<\/p>\n Beneath the surface, scientists believe Titan also hides a subsurface water ocean. Which means it has the potential for two completely different kinds of life. Earth-style biology in the hidden ocean below, or something genuinely alien up top, using methane the way we use water.<\/p>\n