In the “Q&AI” section, in which the AI is asked a question, the chatbot points out that Mars is currently the planet where the chance of extraterrestrial life appears to be greatest. “It’s partly true,” says aviation expert Rob van den Berg.
This may be the ultimate question that scientists and many others hope to answer one day. Is there alien life? ChatGPT asked us for this column “Which planet is most likely to have extraterrestrial life?” under the answer.
Right now, Mars is the planet where the chance of extraterrestrial life appears to be the greatest. Recent discoveries, such as the past presence of water ice and liquid water, as well as the detection of methane in the atmosphere, suggest that Mars may have had conditions conducive to the emergence and maintenance of microbial life in the past.
“I partly agree,” says Van den Berg of the Sonnenburg Observatory in Utrecht. Because long ago Mars seemed like a very fertile planet. There was air and seas, rivers and lakes. Recently, organic materials have also been found. So it can already. But it is not the only answer.
For example, there are also moons around Jupiter and Saturn. “It’s covered in ice and it looks like there are oceans of liquid water out there.” Then you have the circumstances in which life can be.
Celestial bodies or planets?
But in defense of AI, I specifically asked for a planet, not a moon. Van den Berg concludes, “The answer lies partly in the question.” “I repeated the question myself with celestial bodies instead of planets, and then you get a completely different answer indeed.”
However, ChatGPT had more Out of the box can think. The chatbot has now looked at the options in our solar system. But of course the universe is much bigger than that. If you add it all up, you have a whopping number of billions of planets that are similar to our Earth. “There are billions in our Milky Way alone,” says van den Berg.
Discover life in five to ten years
Finally, a human insight not shared by AI: Van den Berg believes there’s a good chance it won’t be long before we start spotting extraterrestrial life within our solar system.
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“There are missions on Mars to investigate life there and we will soon be bringing soil samples back to Earth,” he says. “We’ll also be running huge telescopes and a mission in progress on those moons of Jupiter. So yeah, I expect we’ll find the first evidence in five to ten years.
