Life in our Solar System
By our estimations there are very few places in the Solar System, other than on Earth, that life could have evolved and still be thriving today. But here are a few possibilities:
Europa
Europa is one of Jupiter's moons.
It is covered in a thick layer of water ice that has been cracked and broken into huge glaciers by the gravitational pull of Jupiter and its other moons.
There may be a large volume of liquid water below the icy surface which could support some form of life.
Future life on Europa?
Titan
Titan is the largest of Saturn's moons. Its atmosphere is pure methane and life as we know it on Earth would never survive there. However, it is possible that life could evolve to repire using methane rather than oxygen, as many bacteria on Earth are known to do.
Venus
The surface of Venus is hot, acidic and barren. Life could never exist on Venus's surface 鈥 it would be crushed by high atmospheric pressures (around 100 times greater than on Earth), melted by the high temperatures (around \(500^{\circ}C\)) and destroyed. However, new research into life in the Earth's cloud systems has lead researchers to speculate about the thick, rolling clouds of Venus and whether they could harbour micro-organisms.