What's the Economy Like in the Extraterrestrial World?

Economic problems - even on alien worlds?

Does life exist on other planets, and does this life get into financial jams now and again?

A. Pawlowski reports for CNN that scientists are offering new insight into the possibility. “There may be 100 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, or one for every sun-type star in the galaxy,” said Carnegie Institution astronomer Alan Boss. His prediction is based on the number of “super-Earths” — planets larger than Earth but smaller than Jupiter — that have been discovered orbiting stars outside our solar system.

Boss said that if any of the billions of Earth-like worlds he believes exist in the Milky Way have liquid water, they are likely to be home to some type of life. Whether or not future life that is discovered can be classified as intelligent life will likely depend upon how long that life has had to evolve, if we use ourselves as the model for life.

What kind of life?

No one knows at this time, but Boss suspects that the life would at least be primitive, like bacteria or multicellular organisms that populated Earth for the first few billion years of its existence. Depending upon how long life has existed on inhabitable, water-bearing planets, the life forms could even be more or less advanced that Earth’s own intelligent civilizations.

According to Pawlowski, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland has used a computer model to “create a synthetic galaxy with billions of stars and planets.” By studying how life evolves under various conditions on such worlds, researchers concluded that “at least 361 intelligent civilizations have emerged in the Milky Way galaxy since its creation, and as many as 38,000 may have formed.” ... click here to read the rest of the article titled "What's the Economy Like in the Extraterrestrial World?"