You’re standing at the front of the crowd, the support act have long since left the stage, the roadies have finished setting up the equipment and you wait with anticipation for your favourite band to take the stage. When the house lights drop the crowd roars and the band step out confidently and launch straight into one of your favourite songs.
The next two hours seem to just get better and better and as the band leave the stage you’re left both satisfied and exhausted. Songs you’ve never really listened to suddenly seem amazing when seen live, each song has a big impact on the show and you’re left cheering for more.
When a band performs live a great deal of consideration needs to go into how the set list will flow. When you watch your favourite bands live you may not even notice how they’ve built their set list to give each song the maximum impact it can have but believe it or not there is a hidden art to choosing a great set list.
For this article I’ll assume that you’re in a band with your own material and you have a good grasp of what your ‘hits’ are and what generally gets crowds going, or quietens the mood. You’ll need to have a good grasp of how your songs will affect the audience and what emotions you want to convey with each of them. The reason for this will become clearer later on.
The most important parts of any set list and live show are the start and the end. First impressions are everything, and you want to leave on a high note to give everyone something to remember you by. With this in mind pick out what you feel are your best songs and reserve them for the beginning and the end of your show.
So, first things first. You’ll want to open your show with something from your most recent album/ep/recording. Generally when playing live, bands are promoting their most recent material and so you want to reinforce the new songs. You’ll want to pick one of your better songs so you make a great first impression and get people into your show. The song doesn’t really have to be your best song as such, but it most definitely needs to be one with a big start and a really catching intro. You need to show people just what your band is about during this song and bring up the energy of the show.
Remember that people are there to see you play, and if you disappoint them with the first song it is almost impossible to make up for it later in the show. A lot of bands will write songs with the specific idea of using it as an opening number when playing live, and it is something you may want to consider doing. The opening song can be considered the most important and so making a statement of intent is vital.
So after you’ve made your big entrance where do you go next? I would recommend carrying on with another new song and keep the energy going. Don’t pause between the first few songs as you want to keep the flow. In terms of how you structure your set from here it depends on how long you have to play. I would generally try to split your set into segments and then play enough songs for each segment to fill your set.
Once you’ve opened it is important to keep the momentum, so pick songs that are in a similar vein to your first one. For the third or fourth song I would play an old favourite and something that everyone will know. The reason for doing this is that after your big entrance you’ll need something to pick up the pace again and make it seem like your show is getting better as it goes along.
After the opening salvo of songs you’ll want to start thinking about playing something different. Remember that there is only so long that people can listen to rock and it still have impact as being fast and heavy. You’ll need to change it up to keep the show interesting. Play a quieter, more laid back song in this slot. Doesn’t have to be really mellow just yet, but certainly something a little different. You’ll need to give the audience a break from the energy of your opening salvo and give time for a breather. It’s important to do this as it will give your songs more impact when you pick up the pace again in the middle of the set.
By playing something quieter you’ll give your audience something slightly different to listen to and you’ll affect them differently. Have you ever watched a band play a set and every song was fast and heavy? After an hour you’ve had enough and by the time they’ve finished you’re glad they’re gone, make sure you avoid this and change it up when playing your sets.
After resetting and chilling out for a song or two it’s time to build back up for the middle of your set. Here you can do anything you like really and how long this section lasts is entirely dependent on how long you’re playing for. You’ll want to sprinkle in your hits and new songs together here, remember not to play your best couple of songs just yet, you’ll want to save those for the end.
The middle of the set is a good place to plan some audience interaction, maybe introduce the band and have a chat, that kind of thing. It is also the best place for experimentation in my experience. Remember to keep the energy flowing and keep the gaps between songs down to a minimum.
After you’ve passed the bulk of your set I always find it best if you ‘reset’ the show again. Heading into the last section head back to something quieter, maybe an acoustic song to change the mood again. However here I would concentrate on ramping it up constantly to reach the big finale. Starting quiet you’ll want songs that will build over time back into the full force of your opener. Songs that start quiet and end heavy are perfect to put in here.
After resetting and building back up you’ll want to play out your best songs to finish the set. This is the last memory that people have of you so make sure it counts. Every band I’ve seen always reserves their biggest crowd pleasers for the end, it makes people stay to see the whole show and most importantly, leaves people wanting more.
You can use these points as a general guideline when writing sets for your band, but bear in mind that rules are always there to be broken, especially in music. The start of the show is probably where you have most creative freedom, and I’ve seen some bands do really interesting things with the start of the show. Remember that if your audience is expecting a big overblown entrance then sometimes something more low key can have more impact. The Smashing Pumpkins and Steve Vai are great at doing this and every show I’ve seen from them has had a really memorable opener.
Good luck writing your sets and playing live, it certainly isn’t as easy as it looks as I’m sure you’ll find out.
Fourty-five percent of the American population believe that God created humans and placed them on the Earth less than 10,000 years ago. It is an incredible statistic. That’s 135,512,978 people in the USA who believe the Earth is 10,000 years old, twice the population of the UK.
The question of faith has always been a contentious, and interesting one. Causing more wars than anything else in history, religion has certainly been one of the more interesting phenomena that humanity has created for itself. The dominating religion in the Western world is Christianity and it is certainly hard to get away from it.
As scientific thinking and theories have improved over the last couple of hundred years there have been those religious fanatics who have chosen to reject reasonable ideas and logical thinking and cling to their spiritual beliefs in the wake of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
What got me thinking about religion and it’s conflict with science was a particular branch of Christianity; Creationism. Creationism is the belief that evolution is a myth and that everything was created by an intelligent designer. In this case the designer is God. Strangely it isn’t actually the theory of intelligent design that irks me here, I like to think I’m fairly open to new ideas and generally accepting of religious beliefs, even if I do not agree with them. What does bother me is how the creationists present their views, and how they have such a large population completely brainwashed into the belief.
The creationist argument is that life and the universe as we understand it is so complex, infinitely so, that for it to have happened by chance is ridiculous. They believe that the Earth and all the life that lives on it has been designed and placed there by a divine creator, a God. Obviously this flies in the face of evolution, the theory with millions of years worth of hard evidence.
A common theory put forward by well known creationists is that the banana presents the ‘atheist’s nightmare’. They say that the banana is perfectly suited for a human hand, is colour coordinated to show how ripe it is, has a bio-degradable wrapper, is good to eat and is perfectly shaped for the human mouth. They say that with all these things taken into account it is so obvious that the banana has been designed for humans to eat and hasn’t just occurred by chance. What they fail to mention however, is that the wild banana is quite different. Filled with hard black seeds it is completely inedible. The banana that we know has been genetically modified over thousands of years into it’s current form. In fact the designer of the banana is Man himself, hardly proof of a divine creator.
They then go on to compare various man made structures to naturally occurring phenomenon. They say that to say a building has no designer is ridiculous, and so therefore it is also ridiculous to say that nature has no designer. What they fail to mention is that everything that is naturally occurring has had millions, or billions of years to evolve and come into being. To say that an eye has naturally evolved does initially seem far fetched, but when it is backed up with billions of years of chance it suddenly doesn’t seem so hard to believe.
Imagine playing the lottery every day for five billion years. You’d win quite a few times wouldn’t you? Well this is how evolution works. Over such massive time frames tiny chances of things happening become almost certain to happen. I would guess that religious believers have difficulty in comprehending the vast amount of time that existed before Man. The problem with religion and creationism is that everything is so centered around our own species when really we’ve only been around for an astronomical blink of an eye. Even in our own planet’s history we are quite insignificant, we’ve been around for 200,000 years as opposed to the 500 million years that fish have existed for. To say that a God has designed everything just for us seems entirely implausible to me.
Of course one could never be 100 percent sure that there was no God. You could never say that without having absolute knowledge of everything that exists, has existed or will exist. In this regard I am open to the fact that a God may exist, although I do not believe that one does.
I think that fabricating beliefs based on an old book and presenting them as fact is wrong, however. Surely science and rational thinking should be the basis on which opinion is formed. The purpose of science is to find evidence and present theories based on it. By turning yourself over to a religion you are able to just explain everything away with ‘God did it’. Against such an point of view it becomes difficult to construct an argument. Inevitably they will ask some questions that science does not have an answer for yet, and then they can answer it with ‘God did it’. Science does not pretend to have answers for things it does not understand yet, but preset facts based on real evidence and testing.
Organised religion and faith are relics from the past, unneeded in today’s society. They were used to govern primitive people and give answers to things that people could not understand yet. Essentially ruling people with the fear of going to Hell, religion is no longer needed now that we have organised rules and police forces. By perpetuating the falsehood of creationism and presenting religion as fact these people are slowing the scientific advancement and development of our species.
Religious evangelism needs to accept science or cease spreading its lies, for the good of everyone.
Have you ever seen a local, unsigned band and thought to yourself, why aren’t these guys huge? Conversely have you ever heard a band on the radio and thought, these guys are terrible, I hear better than this at my local. All too often great musical talent goes unnoticed, and it isn’t down to a lack of good songs or live performances. The main thing holding back independent bands is a lack of good self promotion.
With the huge wealth of outlets for promoting your music online there really is no excuse for poor self promotion these days. The Internet has completely opened up underground music and made it much easier for bands to reach their audiences and build up a relationship with their fans. Through this article I will give you some useful tips for starting out when marketing your band online. I am in the process of starting up a new band myself, and this is what I’ll be doing once we get moving along.
The first thing you must do is without doubt the most difficult. Define your sound and write some killer songs and work on an amazing live show. Sounds hard right? Well it is. This is the stage that my band is at right now, we’re just writing a load of songs and trying to find the style that fits us best. Once we’ve written ninety minutes worth of material we’ll start work on our live show and then start gigging.
What you must do when writing your music is work out who you want your target audience to be. You may like all kinds of genres of music but generally when people turn to your band they will expect your sound and you’ve got to deliver it to them. There’s nothing wrong with being able to put your band into a category that people will look for. If you class yourself as heavy rock then that’s good as people that like heavy rock music will be more likely to find you.
As you start to finish up writing your songs and start working on your live set I believe it is a great time to start working on your band website. I would absolutely recommend purchasing the .co.uk or .com domain of your band’s name. I would even go as far as to name the band specifically so you can get the web address you want. If someone tries to find your band online they’re bound to type in yourbandname.com and so ideally you want them to find you.
Once you’ve bought your domain there are a few different ways to get a good band website together. One is to hand build it yourself. It can be quite difficult to do, but gives you complete creative control over the look and content of the site. If none of you can build your site then ask around your friends, maybe one is a budding web designer and wants to add to their portfolio.
Failing this you can choose one of the free blog software sites such as WordPress or Blogger and build your band website as a blog. The advantage of this is that you can post news as new blog posts and you can have the band all contribute here and there. It requires no real knowledge of web design and there are a bunch of great templates for you to use. You can integrate band pictures and add extra pages to your blog site to make it into a great website. Your fans can comment on news posts and you can build a great rapport with them this way. I would actually recommend starting a site like this for your band, if only for the community aspect of it.
If you choose to use blogging software then make sure you write regular updates for your site. You can even write articles about music that is similar to your own. By doing this you will gain a reader base quite quickly, and they’re much more likely to try your music if they like your articles. By writing regularly you’re helping your page ranking in Google. It is quite important for you to rank highly for your band name in Google, as that is the first place people will go when trying to find you. You can litter your posts with keywords so that when people search for you, they get you and not anyone else.
For tips on writing for Google then try searching the web for search engine optimisation (SEO) tips. It is quite a complex topic and you probably won’t need to fully understand it, but certainly a grip on keywords and page ranking will help you when promoting your band online.
So you’ve got your band website up, you’ve got some articles written, maybe about favourite bands or gigs and you’ve started to attract some visitors. Hopefully you’re highly ranked in Google for your band name as well. You’ll want to put up some of your music so people can actually hear you. You can upload mp3s of your songs to your own site as well as many others. When uploading I would honestly recommend giving away your music for free. With the huge wealth of quality music available online if you charge for your music then people just won’t give it a try. At this stage you’re trying to create a following and a fanbase so free music really is the key.
Once you’ve uploaded your mp3s to your own site then it’s best to get moving onto social networking to really help push your band. Social networking has taken the net by storm and now almost everyone is a member of at least one social networking site. They’re fantastic tools to promote your music and can really help you reach people you never would have otherwise. The first stop you should make is MySpace. Set up your profile there and upload some songs for people to listen to. There are fantastic tools there to help push new music so make sure you make the most of them.
Facebook is the most widely used social networking site and there are actually some really neat things you can do with it to help your band out. There is a great application available on Facebook called Facebook Flyers. What this does is enable you to place and ad for your band at the side of people’s profiles. The key here is that you can tailor the ad to your sound so it will only appear on people whose taste matches your band. It is a great tool for your band. You should also set up a Facebook group for your band and add everyone you know to it. This way people can discuss your band and will get notification of when you’re playing and access to all kinds of pictures and information.
Your band should also take the time to record a video and upload it to YouTube. It is just another place you can go to promote your music online. There are a couple of ways to go about making a classic YouTube video. One is to do a fairly serious music video like you would see on MTV. Another is to try to create a video that will generate it’s own buzz and get loads and loads of views purely based on the content of the video. Aussie rock band Sick Puppies used this method of viral marketing to great effect with their ‘Free Hugs’ video. They filmed a guy going round town giving out free hugs with their song playing in the background. The video has been viewed over 19 million times and the band are now signed and on tour with Evanescence.
This just goes to show the power that great Internet marketing can have for your band, and the great thing is that you can do it all yourself easily. The web really has opened up marketing opportunities for emerging musicians but always remember that you’ll only get out of it what you put in. No-one is interested in you to start with, you have to make them interested. Good luck, and above all remember to write great songs. Without great songs all the marketing in the world can’t help you!
As the summer rolls in we’re set for another season of music festivals. While festivals are a great place to see bands you wouldn’t have normally seen and to discover new acts I’ve always felt that the only real place to see your favourite bands play are at their own gigs. Nothing quite beats the atmosphere at a small venue created by an audience who are all there to see the headline act.
With this article I thought I’d say what my favourite live acts have been and who I recommend catching live as they pass through your town. Whatever you do, don’t miss out on the following five bands.
First up is Tool. Seeing Tool is quite a unique experience. The band aren’t typical in the way that they take the stage at all, with singer Maynard James Keenan standing near the back of the stage, leaving a large open space at the front. Tool are notoriously publicity shy and prefer for their music to take centre stage. They’ve only made personal appearances in two of their eight music videos to date.
The same is certainly true of their live show. They use impressive lighting displays and a laser show for visuals and it really works. The band also use a large video screen that plays animations themed to the songs. The clips used aren’t tracked to the music at all, but on their most recent tour were taken from over six hours of footage and played differently each night. Tool’s guitarist, Adam Jones, creates all of the art and animations for the band and he does an amazing job.
The visual aspect of seeing Tool is almost as good as the fantastic music they play and I would certainly recommend seeing them as you won’t see another band like it.
Next vote for me is The Smashing Pumpkins. I would mainly recommend them as they play their songs so well but are not afraid to change things up and play entirely different versions from what is on the album. I’ve seen them four times now and every show has been entirely different. The band will breathe life into old songs by playing new and different version on each tour. Some songs are extended out into longer jams and you can see how Billy Corgan intended them to be before they were reduced in length for recording.
The Pumpkins are also an amazing band at changing the mood of the show and building it back up. At their loudest they rock as hard as any other band I’ve seen, but then in the same show can play mellow acoustic songs just as well. I think that the depth of their back catalogue helps them live as they have such a wealth of different songs to choose from. A great band live and one that can really pull of playing a large venue better than anyone I’ve seen.
Next band I recommend you go see if you haven’t already is Muse. They have won nine awards for best live act since 2001, and for good reason. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band play with such energy and command a large audience so well. I’ve only seen them twice and the most recent time was a few years ago now, so I’m definitely going to catch them on their next tour. They’re kings of overblown rock at the moment and their songs lend themselves so well to the live environment. A definite must-see no mater what kind of rock you listen to.
Everyone that plays guitar needs to go and see Steve Vai play live. It was a tough choice to pick between the Steve Vai band and Dream Theater for my ‘musicianship’ slot but I think Dr Vai just edges it. Considerably more animated, interesting and lively to watch than Dream Theater, seeing Steve Vai live is like nothing else.
He always takes the most phenomenal musicians on the road with him and seeing his band play his music is quite amazing. The fact that Vai does it all with lasers on his fingers while playing a triple neck guitar makes it all the more mind boggling.
Vai is also of the few musicians I’ve seen that can pull off really heavy rock with crazy solos before bringing it down to the most subtle of ballads with a convincing degree of conviction. Don’t miss seeing Steve Vai as you will never see a show quite like it.
Quite often when you see a metal band play live they’re awful. It is a difficult genre to play well, the instruments must be played to perfection or you have a big mess of indistinguishable noise. Singers in heavy bands can sound really terrible live as well as they struggle to replicate what’s on the album and will often sound worse as the show goes on.
Not so for Gothenburg band In Flames. They play their material to perfection and Anders Frinden is the best metal vocalist I’ve seen live. Never missing a note, never dropping out he sounded like he could go on all day. Quite an achievement if you know In Flames’ material. Combine the excellent performance with pyrotechnics, fireworks, a huge lighting rig and an energetic band and you have a winning combination. An excellent band live and I can’t wait until I see them again later in the year.
I would recommend going to as many live shows as you can, even in genres of music you wouldn’t normally consider as you can end up seeing something really good that you may have missed otherwise. Certainly as a musician seeing a live band can give you so many ideas for your own playing and your own shows. I know I’ve stolen a lot of ideas from seeing bands live.
If you get the chance to see any of these bands live then I definitely recommend it, if you don’t see them then you’re really missing out on a great experience.
Change. It is a word that frightens many. The advent of change in our lives is often greeted with hostility and mistrust, as a species we are creatures of habit and our greatest fears often lie in the unknown.
Musicians must constantly grapple with change. The world of music is an interesting case with regards to change in that you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Often a band will attempt to change their sound to remain fresh and exciting only to be shot down in flames. However if you stay the same you’re accused of being stale and past your best.
It is a difficult medium to maintain, and few artists manage it. It would appear to be getting harder as well as we see less career bands come through, and more one hit wonders and fad acts gain popularity very quickly before fading into obscurity.
One of the best examples I can think of where a band was affected drastically by changing their sound is the Smashing Pumpkins. The band released their debut album, Gish in 1991 on a wave of new grunge acts and early 90s alt-rock popularity. Although the album was well received, the Pumpkins didn’t really hit the big time until their second album, Siamese Dream.
Siamese Dream was in all respects a continuation of the sound that the band had established on Gish. Much more ambitious than many of their peers at the time, the album featured a lot of overdubs, studio tricks and guitar solos, all of which were unfashionable at the time. Despite this, the lead single, Today, was a hit on MTV and the band were acclaimed as one of rocks leading acts.
Their next album saw another shift in sound, this time they went into epic rock territory, employing even more instruments and much more expressive ideas. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was a huge double album that seemed to explore every side of Billy Corgans musical personality. Although a change in style the root of their sound was still there. The album was littered with hard rock classics that anyone that loved Siamese Dream instantly connected to. Songs such as Bullet With Butterfly Wings and Zero became mid 90s alt rock classics alongside the more introspective 1979 and Thirty-Three.
Here was an example of a band that had managed to change their sound, remain fresh and gain fans and momentum on the way. It was a brave move to release such a huge body of work at a time when nu-metal was just beginning to gain popularity but it shows the power that changing your style can have in winning new fans and yet staying interesting.
It is important for a musician to progress and change, otherwise you become bored with what you’re playing. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to tour an album for a couple of years and then go back and write a follow up that is almost exactly the same. I’m sure that the Pumpkins felt the same and that changing it up with each release was really the only way that they could keep the band going.
Their next release, Adore, was their boldest step yet. After the bombastic might of Mellon Collie, Adore was a quiet, introspective album that showed a darker, mellower side of the band. Written after several tragic events in the lives of the band, it would seem a natural place to go. However with the world expecting another typical Smashing Pumpkins album full of epic rock songs with heavy guitars Adore was released with songs driven by piano melodies and electronic beats.
In short, the album was not well received by the press or the public. Instead of taking the album as it was as a brilliant piece of music it was lambasted for not adhering to the formula that the public had made for the band. Adore sold substantially less copies than the previous albums and the band haven’t reached the same height of popularity since.
The release of Adore was an example of where artists needs to be brave if they feel that they have to change. Having poured everything into making Mellon Collie I’m sure that Billy Corgan felt that he had exhausted that genre entirely and needed a new musical challenge. Had the band released Mellon Collie part two it would have inevitably been worse than the original and the band would have been picked apart in any case.
The key point for needing to progress is that if you really put your heart and soul into making the best possible album you can in a particular style, how can you be expected to repeat that without making something inferior? The answer is that you can’t. I think this is why we see a lot of flash-in-the-pan bands today who seem to be massive for six months and then disappear entirely. They make a fantastic debut, try to replicate it and fail.
So if you’re a musician my advice would be to never shy away from learning a new style, or taking a new influence, as you never know where your song writing may end up. Always try new things and push your boundaries and you’ll end up as a much better musician because of it. I’m glad that the Smashing Pumpkins took that brave step releasing Adore as I personally think it is a brilliant and highly underrated album. Ironically the style would come into fashion several years later with Radiohead producing a similar album with Kid A.
It is only by changing what is commonly expected as the norm that new styles of music will be discovered. True music fans aren’t interested in listening to the same regurgitated music over and over. At your next band practise, instead of thinking how you can sound like your idols, stop for a moment and think about how you can sound like you instead. Your music will be better off for it.
Ever since Man discovered that the world was, in fact, not flat and that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the other way around they have been looking out into space and trying to discover what is really out there.
The study of the Universe has been driven by the desire to answer age old questions, one of the most prevalent being; are we alone? This question is certainly not new, and has been asked for centuries. However, with the advent of better technology and further space exploration we are coming ever closer to an answer. As more is learnt about other planets and moons we are able to give a clearer answer on whether extra-terrestrial life is likely to exist and where it may be.
The idea of life on other planets has been with us since ancient Egyptian times and ranges from realistic to the fantastic. Many ancient civilisations and religions have discussed the likelihood of life on other planets, with a large number not ruling out the possibility. Modern man certainly hasn’t discounted the fact that intelligent life may exist elsewhere in the universe, and even that microbial life may have formed in our own solar system. The Phoenix lander mission to Mars is currently looking for signs of water on the planet at the time of writing. If water is found then the chance of finding life on Mars will skyrocket.
While the chance of finding intelligent life on Mars remains highly unlikely it has certainly sparked thought of where we may find intelligent life and what conditions it may have evolved in. We may even have to change what we consider life as we discover more about the solar system.
Organisms on Earth are composed from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorus, Life on Earth also needs water to survive. Until recently it was assumed that all ecosystems would need sunlight to start the food chain from photosynthesis. However with the discovery of a thriving ecosystem deep under the ocean living from geothermal vents on the sea floor it has been discovered that life is able to exist in total darkness. This throws open a whole new range of environments that may be habitable that were previously discarded as being unsuitable.
It has been put forward that extra terrestrial life may be based on different elements than those found on Earth. Silicon is commonly promoted as an alternative to carbon as it has some very similar properties. Silicon is far more common through the universe than carbon, the solar system is said to be silicon-rich and carbon-poor. Despite being relatively carbon-poor, life on Earth has still evolved to be based on carbon, suggesting that it is far more suitable for sustaining life.
Given that we know that life on Earth has evolved and works it does make sense to search for Earth-like planets and moons if we are to find life. Given the unfathomably large size of the universe and the sheer number of planets and moons contained in it, it would seem foolish to say that we are alone in the universe. In fact, the laws of probability would state that it is almost certain that there is a planet out there with almost identical conditions to those found on Earth, where life has flourished. Given that life evolved to be so complex here it does not seem a large jump to assume that it has evolved elsewhere in the Universe. Finding it however, is another thing entirely.
Because of the vast distances involved in interstellar travel it is unlikely that we will ever travel to planets outside our solar system, at least certainly not for thousands, maybe millions of years. Currently most of the effort is being made into looking at whether life exists in our own solar system. There are several bodies that are thought of being capable of supporting life.
Mars is the most obvious place to look. Certainly there are signs of there being liquid water in the past and Mars has icy polar caps. Being that water is such a vital ingredient to life on Earth any solid evidence of flowing liquid water on Mars would provide a substantial step forwards to providing real evidence of alien life. It is generally accepted that any life we may find on the Red Planet will be microbial, but even in the event that we find microbes it will be a massive discovery. Confirmation of the existence of bacteria on Mars would open the door to the possibility of discovering life elsewhere in the solar system.
There is some evidence that there may be microbial life on Mars already. Methane cannot stay in the atmosphere for any longer than a few hundred years, but there is a substantial enough amount to suggest that it is being replenished from volcanic processes, or from life forms producing methane as a waste product. The discovery of a large amount of formaldehyde also points to possible microbial life on Mars. However both discoveries are open to debate, with many scientists believing that data has been misinterpreted. Mars also has no magnetic field, which leaves it open to cosmic rays.
It seems likely that the environment on Mars is too hostile to harbour complex multicellular organisms, but it may well be home for microbes and bacteria.
Another key area for finding extra-terrestrial life in the solar system is Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. Titan is larger than the planet Mercury and has a thick atmosphere containing 98.4% nitrogen. Titan and Earth are the only bodies in the solar system to have nitrogen-rich atmospheres, a similarity which makes the moon interesting for finding life. However it should be noted that Titan has no magnetic field and so is sometimes exposed to solar winds, believed to be extremely harmful for life.
Titan is often considered a possible place for life to have evolved. The current atmosphere there has drawn comparisons with the atmosphere present on early-Earth. There are lakes of liquid methane on the -290 degrees surface, and possible liquid ammonia lakes beneath the surface of Titan. These have been pointed to being possible places where life may flourish.
However, despite the optimism of finding life on Titan there are some things to consider. Titan is extremely cold, and its atmosphere is thick enough to give an anti-greenhouse effect, cooling the planet. Chemical reactions as they take place on Earth would be completely different on Titan, with many elements taking different forms.
Looking at environments such as Mars and Titan as possible places for life to exist may seem far fetched. Quite how anything can survive at -290 degrees remains to be seen. However there are several examples of organisms thriving on Earth in extreme conditions. These creatures are called extremophiles and are found in some incredible places.
A good example of an extremophile is the Tardigrade, commonly referred to as the water bear. They are tiny creatures related to arthropods and are found all over the planet. They can be found 6000m above sea level high up in the Himalayas and at a depth of 4000m in the deep sea. They can be found in polar regions and round the equator. Incredibly they can survive temperatures close to absolute zero and as high as 151 degrees Centigrade as well as 1000 times more radiation than any other organism and for ten years without water. They have also been known to survive in a vacuum. It has also been found that they are able to withstand 6000 times atmospheric pressure, which is six times higher than the pressure found in the deepest trenches of the sea.
The fact that Tardigrades are so hardy points to the fact that life can flourish in the most incredible of environments. Given that these creatures evolved on Earth it doesn’t seem to be hard to imagine that creatures with similar survivability have evolved to live on seemingly inhospitable planets. What is to say that the -290 degrees on Titan is too cold? We may even find that we’re living in a uniquely hot environment that would kill most alien life.
When you sit back and look at the kinds of life on Earth and take a detailed look at the geography of extra-terrestrial moons and planets it seems hard to imagine that they’re all lifeless. While researching for this article my opinion has shifted towards believing that should we find alien life that it will be far more similar to life found on Earth than we may think. Looking at the different evolutionary paths on Earth there are a lot of common features found in animals on our planet. Legs, eyes, mouths etc. Given that life must essentially function in much the same way as it does here in order to survive it isn’t hard to imagine alien life being quite similar to life on Earth.
The question of whether we are alone or not in our solar system will be answered within our lifetime, and my belief has shifted from a positive yes to an unsure maybe. After learning of how hardy life on our planet can be and what kind of environments are out there, I do think that we will eventually find life on other worlds.
