[snowwrestler]

I think we will confirm life within 50 years by reading the spectra of distant planets and finding free oxygen in the atmosphere. As far as we know, that can only happen if living creatures are replenishing it.

I think it's unlikely that we will find life anywhere else in our solar system. It's possible that we'll evidence of past life on Mars, but not current. Basically, it's just way too cold or way too hot everywhere but Earth.

edit to add: I hope we do not discover intelligent life until we travel to distant star systems ourselves. If it discovers us here, the outcome will almost certainly be terrible for us, based on the long Earth history of species encountering species.

[gloriousduke]

> way too cold or way too hot

This isn't as big of a concern as it once might have been. See extremophiles.

> It's possible that we'll evidence of past life on Mars, but not current.

If life takes hold anywhere and has any amount of (geologic) time to spread, I'm guessing only an extremely powerful gamma ray burst or other high energy event could completely exterminate it. It might be impossible to sterilize the earth at this point without completely destroying it, and even then there'd probably be microbes in the resulting meteors, etc (until our sun dies at least).

[FranOntanaya]

> Basically, it's just way too cold or way too hot everywhere but Earth.

That's not really true. Only a thin layer of Earth's crust and atmosphere are great for life. Such Goldilocks layers aren't that uncommon if we look at all boundary climates on each body (subsurface sea boundaries, polar boundaries, higher atmosphere boundaries, etc), and not just the boundary analog to Earth's.

Even Mercury has free standing water ice. Somewhere between that ice and the scorched plains there's going to be a somewhat comfy place.

[bdamm]

There are regions of relative temperature stability, such as towards the poles.

I think the outlook for intelligent life in the solar system, other than us, is very bleak for them. If there are whales on Europa, Titan, or Enceladus then it would seem easier for us to damage their ecosystem than the other way around. Unless, of course, they've infiltrated our political systems and are steering us towards self destruction.