I have returned from the dark recesses of XBL in which I mislaid my Easter. It's good to be back.
Do I believe in multicellular life on other planets? I have a couple of problems with the question:
1. What use do I have for "believing" either way? The best I can offer is estimated probability (that I will tentatively assume to be "as close to 1 as makes no odds"). Drakes equation is a good place to start, but filling in the figures requires more science than we, certainly I, have available. Certainly different scientists get different answers from the equation.
2. That's a rather restrictive question. Why are areas of space other than planets, unicellular organisms and non-cellular micro and macroscopic organisms inelligible for consideration? Extraterrestrial life may well be too alien for us to readily identify it as such, or incredibly familiar. At this stage, finding an alien bacterium would be a massive event that would be celebrated by generations to come.
I'm currently reading a number of books of evolution, and of course, the peerless The Science of Discworld which offers astonishing insights into the possibility, philosophy and evolution of ET, which I will relay as soon as I'm finished.
But I think we can be sure, wherever life could arise or colonise, life probably exists, as perfectly adapted to its habitat such that it appears that its home was tailors specifically for it.
No matter how deadly it would be for us.
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It was a semi-joke.
