Help needed with extraterrestrial project

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Hi,
J is doing a project at school, the theme was space (they have lots of info on space), but my boy is insisting on doing his on extraterrestrials. The info we have found is all aimed at adults. If anyone knows of a good web site to go to that is 10 year old friendly that would be fantastic.

This might be a start: http://encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/as/Astrobiology
The link to http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai/ claimed it had information for kids, but I haven't found it. Perhaps you have better luck.
Here you find

On sale from "Science Learning Activities for Afterschool". I have no idea how good they might be, I only found them through my search for you.

The key word you need for further search is astrobiology or xenobiology.

You could also search for information on the origin of life on Earth. I read there is fossil evidence for microbial life from about the moment Earth had cooled down enough to allow life (within the measurement error). That means either life arises easily, or it came from elsewhere. In either case, there should be at least microbial life elsewhere in the universe. Intelligent aliens are much less likely. If intelligent, space-faring aliens existed, why are they not here? That's the Fermi Paradox: Stars like the Sun have been around for a long time, so if the kind of intelligence that takes you into space was easy to evolve, it probably would have happened before. The Milky Way has a diameter of about 100000 light years. You can calculate how long it would take for a space-faring species to spread across the galaxy. Let's say it takes 500 years to get from one habitable star system to another in sub-light generation ships, and another 2000 years to build up industry and population to the point where an expedition to the next system will be launched. Say habitable star systems are on average 50 light years apart. Then that civilization would spread with an average speed of 0.02 light years per year of time or 20000 light years per million years. That doesn't sound fast, but in a mere 5 million years, that would take you right across the Milky Way. If they're slower by a factor 10, it would take 50 million years. That's still peanuts compared to the age of the Sun and Earth. If just a few stars like the Sun had a billion years head start, and if space-faring intelligence was common, these people should already be everywhere.

Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series of novels describes generation ships. I don't think it would be too difficult for a 10 year old. As luck would have it, the BBC will broadcast a radio dramatization on Saturday (the Classic Serial, second from the top of the list).

Miami has a kid friendly space museum thats big on extraterrestrials.
Room after room of UFO', and exhibits of what hypothetic aliens who evolved on differently endowed planets might look like ( with less or more gravity etc). They might have something on their website.

Its an interesting subject, but since its a subject "without a subject" (since there are no proven ET's) a kid (or an adult) researching the topic is like a boat without a rudder in a vast sea of pure speculation.

Life started on Earth perhaps four billion years ago, but remained at the bacterial stage until about 1.5 billion years ago when one celled protozoa appeared. Multicelled critters didnt appear until 600 million years ago. Then the pace quickened-jellyfish and trilobites- to us.

The point is that it was a miracle that life gets started at all on any planet. Once it gets started its a miracle that it gets beyond the bacterial stage. So little green, or gray, men must be exeedingly rare in the cosmos. But are they non-existant? And could they travel here? Thats the question. The trick is breaking that large question into some small bite sized question that a ten year old could research.
Like- what the previous poster suggested- how feasible is interstellar space travel.

Good luck.

Hello All!

I was delighted to see the topic chosen by J!

IQXS will be more than happy to help and would need a bit more clarification.

Is he looking for data on races of extraterrestrials...or events of encounters?
He IS considering beings, right? ...and not, microbial extraterrestrial elements.
Makes a BIG difference.

I have Twittered this post on my Twitter site.
h t t p : // twitter . com / IQXS
(remove spaces to visit site)

My "followers" (as they are called on Twitter) may be inclined to assist as we are a community of UFO and extraterrestrial enthusiasts. However not everyone will want
to create an account here to contribute, unfortunately. IQXS will be happy to help be the middle man, so to speak. As J's parent we invite you to contact
us directly at x @ iqxs . org.

There's a great amount of info out there...let us help him sort through things
to present a great report!

Excellent topic J!

Kudos!
IQXS

I left out those two steps, but they're very important. If J wants to make an argument whether there is other life in the universe, there are several questions to ask and answer:

Are there other places where life can exist? All life we know needs liquid water. That is available not just on planets in the classic habitable zone at the right distance from a star, but probably also on moons like Europa, that gets heated by tidal forces. There is good evidence for exoplanets (planets orbiting other stars), so there should be many places outside our solar system with liquid water. There is also life deep down in rocks, and around hydrothermal vents, that doesn't care much about the climate or the radiation level on the surface. simple microbial life doesn't seem to make many special demands, so there should be lots of places where it can exist.

Once you look at multicellular life that is on the surface of a planet, that usually doesn't like high radiation levels or big temperature variations. So it wants a planet with a good magnetic field to protect against charged particles from its sun, and a planet that doesn't flip its axis of rotation often. A big moon stabilizes a planet, so that would be a good thing. Big moons are probably rare, so there will not be so many places where multicellular life can exist.

The next question is how easily life turns up on a planet. That's where showman616's information is important. From what we know of Earth, it seems difficult to get to eukaryotes, life that has a more complicated cellular organization. It is also difficult to get from eukaryotes to multicellular life. And it seems difficult to get from multicellular life to something with enough brains to create technology.

I think if we could survey the universe for life, we would find microbes in many places, something like eukaryotes rarely, and multicellular life would be extremely rare. For the reasons Fermi explained, it is unlikely that there is any other technological civilization in this galaxy, because if there were, it is unlikely that would be at exactly the same stage as we are. Give them just 50 million years head start, and they'd be all over the galaxy. If they're 50 million years behind us, they don't exist yet, and we are likely to show up on their planet before they do. Measured against the ages of stars and planets, 50 million years is very little.



Exactly. And if he has more detailed questions, you can probably get answers if you post his questions here in the science, maths and computers forum, or you can looks for an astrobiology forum, for example on yahoo. Because I find Fermi's argument persuasive, I would stay clear of UFO enthusiasts (sorry IQSX, I thoroughly disagree with what I think your position is).

What kind of grade could a kid expect when his entire thesis comes down to: "Extraterrestrials: We Just Don't Know"?

Lol, well, actually, there IS good information that can be put into such a report. My son did a section last year on it, mostly discussing the probability of life as we know it existing elsewhere. Oh, now I'm remembering more: he also talked about depiction in the arts, doing a section on that as well. I didn't help him with reseasrch since he did that while at school, so I can not be much help to the OP. My son did get a good grade on it, however

I just want to say a huge THANK YOU to all that responded to my plea for help.
Wow so much more info than I could possibly have gotten him myself.

Even though he has strayed off the class topic a little, his teachers are very excited that he is being original in his choice and they are supporting him all the way. Yay to his new school.

I will have him read threw all the info posted, but as you all should know he is an aspie and will only do what he wants to do. I personally didn't think he had any clue as to how he was going to set about doing this project, but he does. He wont do a rough copy first lol whats the point! He has a lot of facts and info already in his head, he told me a little. Where he gets this stuff is beyond me. Any ways Thanks again all who posted!! !!