Are we the only planet in the cosmos on which life has thrived? This is a great question that humanity has asked itself for centuries and, now, thanks to the spectacular advance of space exploration, we may be close to finding out. Astrobiology is a multidisciplinary science dedicated to the study of the origin, presence and influence of life in the universe.
New exoplanets are identified each year, and many of them could be habitable. However, we do not have the capacity to send probes and study their conditions closely, so the possibility of finding life beyond the confines of the solar system is very remote. Our solar system was considered for many years a barren region, and it was thought that, except on Earth, it was impossible for the conditions necessary for life to exist on other planets. Today we know that it is not: our rocky neighbor Mars could have been, thousands of years ago, similar to Earth, and several of the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn could have subterranean oceans in which life has thrived . Some of these satellites even have an atmosphere.
The magazine of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has compiled, from less to more, the ten best candidates in the solar system in which to search for life, whether present or past. Will we find it in any of them?
