Is there life out there? | Reasons Podcast - Ep 33

Ajouté : 2026-05-05

[00:00:03]So, you know, we are talking about these Martians with their glass helmets coming and, you know, they're not able to breathe oxygen. Is there the possibility that aliens could have come to Earth?

[00:00:13]>> Well, this is what's hard to fathom is just how big our universe is.

[00:00:19]Scientifically, it's just like there's so many things that argue against that.

[00:00:22]>> So, when I was young, I watched a film where Martians actually came to planet Earth and did a lot of things. There was wars and then I watched another movie called ET and that left me wondering could life exist somewhere out there except for our planet earth. So to help us understand what this is all about is Dr. Jeff Zwering a senior scholar of reasons to believe and an astrophysicist who looks at the stars and explores if life might be possible out there. So Jeff, there's an old, you know, age-old conversation about are we alone or, you know, could there be life somewhere else? You know, the universe is so wide.

[00:01:04]So just help us understand what are some of the scientific evidences that extraterrestrial life might be out there. You know, I I think this is an old age-old question and I I wrote a book about this and I was just kind of doing research on how far back could you find this discussion and I found it back well actually before the time of Christ written descriptions of this. Wouldn't surprise me that Adam and Eve were arguing about this in the garden just because it's such a fascinating question and >> one of the things that I've found is that >> it's not I don't think it's actually a very clear answer. uh you know I I think I can put forward some good arguments that we might find life out there. For example, >> when you look at the abundance of elements in our universe, you would expect them the more the as you move up the periodic table, they will be more abundant because that's the way elements are put together in the earliest moments. Well, it turns out hydrogen is most abundant. Not unusual. Helium is the next most abundant. But the next two are carbon and or carbon and oxygen, which are two of these elements that are critical for life.

[00:02:06]>> Yeah. And it turns out that these elements are formed in the hearts of stars. And stars seem designed to produce carbon and oxygen. So >> when we look at the universe, it naturally produces the elements that life requires. I mean, you're going to have to have oxygen because oxygen is a critical component of water. You're going to have to have carbon because it is the only element that has the chemical complexity that life requires.

[00:02:35]And water and carbon, the chemistry that carbon has works well in liquid water at the right. I mean, they're just suited to go to each other. And so, our universe seems designed to produce the stuff that life requires.

[00:02:48]>> Now, up until the 1990s, we only knew of the eight planets in our solar system.

[00:02:53]Yeah.

[00:02:53]>> A lot of people would like to say Pluto was a planet. It never should have been.

[00:02:57]May irritate people with that, but it's the facts, so we'll deal with it. But starting in the 1990s, scientists started finding planets outside our solar system. And we've now found thousands. I think it's up around eight or nine thousand at this point.

[00:03:11]>> And what astronomers have been able to do is say, okay, given the number of planets we see, how massive they are, they can estimate just in the Milky Way galaxy alone how many planets of various sizes. And it turns out when you look at Earth's size or larger planets, there are probably over 400 billion Earth-sized planets just in the Milky Way.

[00:03:33]>> Wow.

[00:03:34]>> More than one per star. So you've got the universe seems designed to produce the elements that life requires. You got planet formation like Earth seems to be abundant as well. You throw in the capernac principle that maybe nothing special is true about the earth system and says all right it seems like our universe is designed to produce life so we might find life out there. So those are the be the arguments I think that are the most interesting and compelling.

[00:04:01]Uh there's more to it there. You could add more to that but I think those are kind of the standout arguments if you will.

[00:04:06]>> That's very interesting because you know there are arguments that have been made by other scientists as well saying that our planet seems to be very special.

[00:04:13]>> It's a rare earth so to speak. So can you help me explain what are these scientific evidences that point to the fact that the planet Earth is special that it can accommodate life intelligent life that >> a good question because you know like I said there's probably 400 billion earth-sized planets in our galaxy alone just because there's a lot of them doesn't mean they could support life. I mean for example >> your planet must be at the right distance from the star. I think you could make an argument you got to have the right kind of star as well. So just most of those planets are going to be around these very small dwarf stars, which means that the those Earth-sized planets, if they're going to orbit where liquid water could exist, are going to orbit in a way so the same side is always facing the star. Well, that means >> you're going to have a really hot side and a really cold side and just right, there's going to be this really thin strip where it might be the right temperature. So, just because there's a lot of Earth-sized planets doesn't mean that they're around the right kind of stars or they're at the right distances or they've got to be the right size. If they're too large, they retain an atmosphere that's too dense, has a lot of methane and nitrogen ammonia in it.

[00:05:26]Um, if it's too small, all of the all of the water escapes. So, you got to have a planet that's the right size. Turns out that the size of the planet impacts the kinds of plate tectonics that happen.

[00:05:35]plate. Planets that are too large have too violent of a plate tectonics.

[00:05:40]Planets that are too small don't have enough. And so there's just numerous factors you can point to and say a planet's got to have this kind of characteristic. And so even though there might be 400 billion, turns out that >> maybe not a lot of those actually fit all the criteria. And then when you go and include, okay, life has this genetic code that's the background to it.

[00:06:03]getting that to come about is incredibly difficult. I mean, it's an incredibly well-designed code. Um, >> you know, you've got all of these features and and then just even you look at the history of life on Earth, we think, okay, once you get life started on Earth, you're going to get this progression in sequence. But you've got the sun gets 20 30% brighter over its time. The a the oceans and atmosphere go from no free oxygen to abundant free oxygen. You got plate tectonics that build uh continents and uh and oceans.

[00:06:38]You've got this radical change in the diversity of life that actually drives a lot of change. There's this great symphony of things going on. And so you can make a really strong argument that yes, we see abundant life here on Earth because it's been designed to do that.

[00:06:52]So just because we find other planets doesn't mean we're going to find all the conditions that allow life to happen. So I think you can make an argument that earth is pretty special at the same time.

[00:07:02]>> Amazing. And you know there are a lot of movies you know from the olden days to modern times where people have actually come up with the idea that aliens could have come and visited our planet earth.

[00:07:14]>> So you know we are talking about these Martians with their glass helmets coming and you know they're not able to breathe oxygen. But um you know to be on a more serious note is there the possibility that aliens could have come to earth.

[00:07:30]>> So I I think one of the things that we have been able to do is to explore the planets of our solar system pretty well and certainly there's no large or large large life sitting around on those planets. Now there's a question of whether there's bacterial life. We just don't have the ability to detect that.

[00:07:45]So the idea that there's life around in our solar system that could come to Earth is just >> we know that's not the case. Yeah. So now the question is, could life come from somewhere else?

[00:07:55]>> Well, this is what's hard to fathom is just how big our universe is.

[00:08:01]>> Light travels 200,000 miles per second.

[00:08:05]>> That means in one second, light can make eight loops around the Earth.

[00:08:09]>> Yeah.

[00:08:10]>> So very fast.

[00:08:11]>> The light traveling from the closest star to us takes over four years.

[00:08:17]>> Now, so we can't even travel close to the speed of light. But there's a different I mean you know to get to the closest star it would take a long time.

[00:08:25]So the spaceships that we have launched the fastest ones would take somewhere between 40 to 80,000 years to get to another star.

[00:08:34]>> Okay.

[00:08:35]>> So the idea of another another aliens coming here or traversing that distance probably not. So well you might say well maybe the technology is better. They can travel at maybe 10% the speed of light.

[00:08:45]So it only takes 40 years.

[00:08:46]>> Yeah.

[00:08:47]>> Well there are other problems associated with that. one, can you build the technology to do that? Because to get a, you know, two or three pound or 1 kilogram object accelerated up to 10% the speed of light requires about the entire energy budget of the United States for a year. So, lot of energy involved in that. And once you're going that fast, if you run into anything out in space, it's going to destroy your ship. So there it makes great sense in the movies, makes for great great uh stories there, but the idea of there being aliens out there that have figured out how to come to Earth >> scientifically is just like there's so many things that argue against that. I can't prove that it doesn't happen, >> but all the data says nah, that's not that's not what's going to happen.

[00:09:30]>> That's interesting. But you know, there's a religious question to that.

[00:09:34]You know, many people might argue and say that if extraterrestrial lives do exist, intelligent life out there, >> maybe we're not that special or it could do away with the Bible.

[00:09:46]>> So, what would your take on that be?

[00:09:49]>> So, I think the idea that maybe we're not that special kind of misses the point because again, I look at it from a Christian context.

[00:09:56]Humanity is special not because we're unique. Yeah.

[00:10:00]>> We're special because we're made in God's image. M >> so if God made other ali or other creatures out there that wouldn't change our specialness. I mean if that were the case >> my first son was born he's special the moment my daughter's born yeah >> my son's specialness goes down. It's not true. He's special because he's my son >> because I have another son or another daughter doesn't change that. So so I think that maybe from a naturalistic perspective or in some other worldviews that would diminish the value. But in a in a Christian worldview, finding other life out there wouldn't impact the importance of humanity at all. But this is this is what I find interesting. Two other facts that come in with that. One is that Christians have thought about there being extraterrestrial life >> far longer than science was even coming into the game.

[00:10:47]>> Oh, really?

[00:10:47]>> So, uh, you know, science, we've been doing that for maybe 400 years. Yeah. So you go back at least two or three hundred years and you've got Kepler who's a devout or Galileo who's a devout Christian who's arguing that God only created life here on planet Earth.

[00:11:02]>> You've got Kepler who's contemporary also a devout Christian arguing that anybody out there any of those object bodies out there God's created life there.

[00:11:10]>> So you got here you've got two Christians arguing that back at the dawn of the scientific revolution. But the reality of it is you go back even I I I can point to papers a a thousand years ago where Christians are saying if we found life, how would that impact Christianity? And what they've come up with is there's a there's a narrative of Christianity that there's creation that God created everything. There's the fall, >> yeah, >> big event in in humanity. Then there's the incarnation and redemption with Christ coming and living on or coming to earth. And then there's the consummation or the end times.

[00:11:45]>> Yeah.

[00:11:46]>> And so if you're gonna say, "Does this impact Christianity?" You got to ask, "How does that impact that?" Yeah.

[00:11:51]>> Well, God would still be the creator.

[00:11:53]>> Doesn't impact that. Would they have followed? Now, that's an interesting theological question. Yeah.

[00:11:59]>> Um CS Lewis uh a great philosopher and theologian writer actually explored this idea in his space trilogy that there was one of the books talks about a planet where there's life >> where the life never fell.

[00:12:14]>> And so if they never fell >> their redemption or their story may be different but it doesn't conflict with what God's revealed to us.

[00:12:23]>> Or maybe they fell but God has a different means of redemption. Or maybe they fell and there's no means of redemption.

[00:12:29]>> Or maybe they fell and Christ's res Christ's life, death, and resurrection is so momentous that it accounts for it.

[00:12:36]>> My point is just simply this.

[00:12:39]>> Theologians have thought about how would extraterrestrial life fit within Christian theology. And they found it fits very comfortably within that long before science ever came into the game.

[00:12:50]So it's not like they're just saying, "Oh, wait, maybe there's aliens. Now we have to They thought about this long before science could ever even come to the table.

[00:12:58]>> And the reality of it is even if we find life out there, I think it's a great theological question. Might there be life? It's a great scientific question.

[00:13:07]And as a Christian, I'm just excited about the exploration. If we find life, that's going to be fascinating. If we don't, that's also going to be fascinating.

[00:13:14]>> Wow. That's that's a lot that you've unpacked in this short time. But dear viewers, I'm sure that you've enjoyed our conversation about extraterrestrial lives. And if you want to know more about this, you know, Jeff has done extensive work. You can uh find them on reasons.org and do visit their website and also follow us on our social media handles as well. With that, thank you so much.