*Hannah raised her hand* i aree with Bailey, the universe is just to big to have only one planet with life on it!

Evy suddenly frowned and raised her hand.

"Hmm, professor, I just tought about what you said earlier and I think you made a mistake. I don't mean to offend you or anything... You said that the magnetic poles aren't the same as the geographic poles. Thus the south magnetic pole should be located in Canada, and the north magnetic pole in Antarctic...isn't it?"

Nadia really didn't have an answer to that question. Meeting aliens was just something she fonud hard to believe, but then again life itself wasn't that incoherent.

"With so much space around us, a growing inmensity of universe, it is hard to believe there wouldn't be another superficies, just alike the Earth, where life could happen to exist. Moreover, we do not know from our experience of being possible, but it is safe to assume that other species may not need of our same needs, like water, sunshine and oxigen. Yes, I do believe life can appear in other planets. But I also think that they are not anywhere near our solar system, maybe not from our whole galaxy! There's too much space to discard that possibility."

She paused and added. "Extraterrestrial life is currently a hypothetical notion - there is as yet no evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life that has been widely accepted by scientists. Not neccessarily we mean green, big-eyed people. Speculative forms of extraterrestrial life range from humanoid and monstrous beings seen in works of science fiction, to life at the much smaller scale of microbes and bacteria... maybe something more close to bacteria would be also easier to deem."

Interesting, alot of varying opinions. Excellent!

I personally believe that yes, the universe is much to big to only have 1 planet that supports life. I don't think that our galaxy has any more, but there are an unkown number of stars and galaxies that might be capable of producing life. I'm not saying that it has to be humanoid in appearance or anything even close, but I totally think there is something else out there. Thats a whole lotta space...

Would anyone else like to share their opinion?

"Mmm I don't know what could be out there... aliens or more human beings... Could be both." Meghan thinks some more.

"I don't think we will find human beings like us somewhere else in the Universe, simply because there cannot exist a planet exactly like ours. As living beings are generally influenced by the environment the live in, it would be impossible to find some that have evolved exactly like we did."

i think that we will find living beings perhaps of superior intelligence than us and perhaps dont want to contact us for our way of killing and burning our planet and ourselves or perhaps the alien sightings that there have been with flying saucers are actually more evolved humans from the future, having invented a way to go back in time

*Em scribbles down notes and replies to the Professor's question* "I definitely think there is life on other planets, maybe even in our galaxy. We haven't been able to search most of them. But life forms on other planets/galaxies may be something completely different than our idea of life, so who knows if we are looking for the right thing? And other life forms may live off of carbon dioxide or some other gas, as well as different temperatures. So, who really knows what's there or not?"

Natalya bites her bottom lip, thinking hard for a moment. "I once read something about Mars which highly supported the idea that the planet may have contained life but it became extinct after an ice age. The idea was instigated by a study of the planet's ice caps. The fact that many both wide and narrow veining chasms resembling river beds and streams spreading out over the surface suggest that flowing water indeed once prevailed, and with water, it only seems natural that even some kind of primative organism once thrived. But the idea of any sapient creature existing outside our world just seems preposterous to me. Also, I think belief in another world likes ours depends much on one's religious practice."

"Yes, that is possible," Diana agreed. "But do you know that Mar's ice caps move around the planet because it's axis constantly changing? I've read it somewhere before on a muggle science magazine."

Raises her hand and asks "Professor, ive read in muggle science magazines about "bites her lip trying to remember* oh yeah, crop circles what do you think about them? i mean do you believe that other planets, are trying to contact us through these enigma?"

hmph. jenn was rather disgruntled with her very few points for the original question when she did look it up in the book. just to make sure she looked up "oblong" and found "deviating from a square, circular, or spherical form by elongation in one dimension". not daring to correct the professor she doesn't speak up. her self-esteem is definitely not helped by this.

"i believe there is life out there. right now muggles are searching for planets similar to jupiter, large masses that would attract any asteroids etc. that could collide with a planet like earth. they find these planets by looking at the "wobble" of stars, the gravitational attraction of such a large planet causes the barycenter of the star-planet orbit to by slightly off the center fo the star. after identifying these systems, muggle scientists are then looking for a planet earth-sized. it has generally been agreed that water is essential to life and an earth-sized planet is also necessary because its mass is large enough that the core is very hot and there is an active mantle. The earth's position in the solar system is also important because any further away (like Mars) and there wouldn't be enough solar energy to sustain liquid or gaseous water, but any closer and too much energy would be absorbed, blowing water off the planet. Life could be found in any form, microscopic, dinosaur level, beings more intelligent than humans.... There are so many billions of stars out there that the probability of life is very good. For all we know there are things out there that are searching for us."

she adds in a whisper to Evy, "the north pole IS by canada and the south in antarctica, the north pole attracts the south end of magnets and vice versa. occassionally there will be polar reversals but that probably won't happen for a long long time."

Serena pondered the question.

"I would like to think there is other life somewhere, but I don't think so. At least what you would call intelligent life. We do live in huge universe with many galaxies, so anything is possible."

"I believe we cannot be the only ones. I dare say that somewhere might be a more intelligent species, that doesn´t destroy their environment the way we do, or at least the muggles do," Drusilla says thougtfully. In fact, she didn´t remember many magic things that were harmful for the environment, except the Dark Arts maybe...

"Who can say we didn´t first live in Mars or Venus? Venus could have been destroyed by some stupid muggle-technology, that´s why it´s so cloudy... In ancient South-American cultures you can find some pictures that resemble something like space-ships. Also in many religions throughout the world there are various stories about the previous ´worlds´, which have been destroyed and then re-built. What if Noah´s Ark was really a spaceship?"

Jordan raised her hand. "I think that the universe is so huge that we can not know if there are other life forms. I think it is possable but how can we ever know?"

Francis raises her hand. "Well, the term life can be misleading.. Since there can be life in different ways. There can be oxygen supported life, or methana supported life.. And then the question is about the difference between life and intelligent life. We know that life can exist pretty much anywhere at a bacterial level.. Intelligent life may be harder to achieve, I think... But I agree.. The universe is a pretty big place"

Well everyone, that was a very mature and intelligent discussion. Well done!

Now as we all know, our sun and planets only make up one galaxy in the big ol' universe. What is the galaxy called that we live in?

*raises hand* The Milky Way? *suddenly wants a candy bar*

Serena raised her hand, "The Milky Way Galaxy."

jenn raises her hand and answers "we live in the milky way galaxy, it is named that because we are in one of the 'arms' of the spiral, and when it is a clear night in the desert you can sometimes see a line of stars that people thought looked like a 'milky way'"

Thats right, its name is derived from its appearance as a faintly luminous band that stretches across earth’s sky at night.

The Milky Way has been determined to be a large spiral galaxy, with several spiral arms coiling around a central bulge about 10,000 light-years thick. The stars in the central bulge are closer together than those in the arms, where more interstellar clouds of dust and gas are found. The diameter of the disk is about 100,000 light-years. It is surrounded by a larger cloud of hydrogen gas, warped and scalloped at its edges, and surrounding this in turn is a spherical halo that contains many separate globular clusters of stars mainly lying above or below the disk. This halo may be more than twice as wide as the disk itself. In addition, studies of galactic movements suggest that the Milky Way system contains far more matter than is accounted for by the known disk and attendant clusters—up to 2000 billion times more mass than the Sun contains. Astronomers have therefore speculated that the known Milky Way system is in turn surrounded by a much larger corona of undetected matter. Another recent speculation is that the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy.

Well thats really all we have to cover this lesson. Any questions please post them. Meanwhile, for homework...

1. How far is the earth from the sun? (1)
2. What is the difference between the two diametre's of earth? (2)
3. What shape is the earth described as (that we talked about in class). (2)
4. What is the length of the earth's orbit? (2)
5. What are the 5 layers of the earth's composition? (3)

PM your answers along with your name, house and member number (see thread in classroom if you dont know it yet) to me. You have 3 days to complete it. It is worth a total of 10 points. Good luck!

Serena finished taking down notes and then added the homework assignment.

"Bye Professor Dainsie! Great class!" she said as she looked at the stars from the Astronomy tower wishing she could linger.

Francis writes down her homework and packs her quill and parchment. Waving goodbye, she leaves the class.

Evy packed her things and walked towards the exit.

"Bye Professor! That was a very interesting class!"

*Em writes down her homework and decides she has no more questions, so she leaves the classroom* "Bye, Professor, thanks for a great lesson!"