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Surveys of the scientific community on the existence of extraterrestrial life

Nature Astronomy volume 9, pages 16–18 (2025)Cite this article

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During February–June 2024 we conducted four surveys among researchers regarding the likely existence of basic, complex, and intelligent extraterrestrial life. Our results offer a snapshot of community opinion and reveal a significant degree of consensus that extraterrestrial life is likely to exist.

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Fig. 1: Six key results emerging from the four surveys conducted.
Fig. 2: A depiction of evidence and agreement statements and their relationship to confidence.

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Acknowledgements

For helpful discussion and feedback we would like to thank delegates at the Kavli-IAU symposium, ‘(Toward) Discovery of Life Beyond Earth and its Impact’, held at the University of Durham, UK, 15–19 April 2024. Thanks to K. Denning and I. Loes ten Kate in particular, for extended discussion. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Durham, Durham, UK

    Peter Vickers, Emma Gardiner, Catherine Gillen, Cyrille Jeancolas & Ufuk Tasdan

  2. School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Byron Hyde

  3. Research on Research Institute, University College London Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy, London, UK

    Byron Hyde

  4. Advanced Research Computing, University of Durham, Durham, UK

    Samantha Mitchell Finnigan

  5. Department of Philosophy and History of Science, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

    Julie Nekola Nováková

  6. Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

    Julie Nekola Nováková

  7. Department of Philosophy, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Henning Strandin

  8. Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Henry Taylor

  9. UK Centre for Astrobiology, School of Physics and Astronomy & School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Sean McMahon

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  1. Peter Vickers
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  2. Emma Gardiner
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  3. Catherine Gillen
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  4. Byron Hyde
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  5. Cyrille Jeancolas
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  7. Julie Nekola Nováková
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  8. Henning Strandin
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  9. Ufuk Tasdan
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  10. Henry Taylor
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  11. Sean McMahon
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Correspondence to Peter Vickers.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Astronomy thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Discussion and Supplementary Figures 1-5

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Vickers, P., Gardiner, E., Gillen, C. et al. Surveys of the scientific community on the existence of extraterrestrial life. Nat Astron 9, 16–18 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02451-0

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