(c) Anthony K. Grafton 2003

Are We Alone?

Very little can stretch the imagination more than considering the possibility of life on other planets. Does it exist? What is it like? Could it be intelligent? These are just a few of the questions that come to mind on the subject, and each of these questions is almost as important as any ever asked by man. And the truly incredible thing is that we are almost able to answer some of them.

Does life exist off of Earth? In just the last few years, a group of scientists from NASA have presented what they believe to be fossil evidence of past life on Mars (though others disagree). Astronomers have sighted nearly a hundred planets outside our own solar system; so many in fact that it seems that planets may be a common feature of stars. Closer to home, Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, is now believed to have a vast, warm ocean of water that could support life beneath an ice-covered surface. And here on our own planet, organisms have recently been found living in environments ranging from boiling hot water to hundreds of feet beneath solid rock, making it more likely that life can survive on other planets in environments previously thought unlivable. It is, in fact, quite unlikely that life doesn’t exist elsewhere in some form.

Will we find intelligent life? The series of events that would lead to intelligent life are very complex, and the almost indescribable distance between stars makes it unlikely that we would even know that they were there. But we are listening for them. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is constantly scanning the skies in hopes of catching the radio signals from distant worlds. And excitingly, this is one of the few large scientific projects that you can participate in using your own home computer. You can learn more at http://www.setiathome.com. Who knows, you might be the first to pick up an interplanetary television commercial!