Are we alone in theUniverse?
Are we alone in the Universe? Mankind has asked this question since we firststared upintothe night sky wondering if there is anyone else out there, somewhere amongst the billions of stars, or if we are really alone in this vast universe.Speculation about the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe goes back toancient times.In the nineteenth and early twentiethcenturiesthere was intense speculation, based on telescopic observations, about the existence ofintelligent lifeon Mars. The possibility of intelligent alien life was a topic for science fiction writers.Many films in thisgenre have been hugely popular, e.g. ‘Independence Day’, ‘ET - the Extraterrestrial’, etc.
Probability of Life
Theuniverse is a pretty big place, and if life was able to evolve here on Earth, I see no reasonwhy it couldn’t evolvesomewhere elsehavinga hospitable environment.Some scientistclaim earth is unique, but life could evolve to the conditions present in that planet. Well thatlife might not survive on our planet and vice versa.I believe that there are, in fact,extraterrestrial life forms out there.Our Universe ishome to trillions of galaxiesThere are over 300 Billion stars in our home galaxy ‘Milky way’presumably, many billionsof planets.Itis estimated that around 10 million planets have habitable zones, so if there are10 million possibilities in our owngalaxy think about the Universe,the possibility isso highfor us to imagine.Many scientist believe it is most certain that intelligent life forms havedeveloped somewhere in the universe some of them may be far more advanced thanus.In1960Frank Drake formulated an equation to calculate the potential number of extraterrestrialcivilizations in our galaxy, theMilky Way,itscalled drake equation. Ifsuch intelligent
beings are there,why there is no evidence, whydidn’ttheytry to contact us?
The distance
Interstellardistances are staggering millions of light years.There are no effective ways totravelthese vastdistances.Inorder to makecontactthata very high speed or a very longtravel time is needed.The time it takes with most realisticmethods would befromdecadestomillennia. Hence an interstellar ship would be much more severely exposed
to the hazards found ininterplanetary travel, includinghardvacuum,radiation,weightlessness, andmicrometeoroids.The distance fromEarthto the
Moon is 1.3light-seconds. With current spacecraft propulsion technologies, a trip to themoon will typically take about three days. That means light travels approximately twohundred thousand times faster than current spacecraft propulsion technologies. The distancefrom Earth to other planets in the solar system ranges from three light-minutes to about four light-hours. Depending on the planet and its alignment to Earth, for a typical unmannedspacecraft these trips will take from a few months to a little over a decade.The nearest known star to theSunisProxima Centauri, whichis4.23 light-years away. The
fastest outward-bound spacecraft yet sent,Voyager 1, has covered16.596 billionkm reaching
end of solar systemin 30 years and is currently moving at 17Km/s. At this rate, a journey toProxima Centauri would take 72,000years. There is no way for us to leave our solar systemwith our current technology.Then how do we know we are not alone?
SETI
The only possible solution is to check for communications from outer space. If eachintelligent life forms realize they are not unique make effort to contact civilizations elsewherein the universe, this line of thought brings a group of scientists to form an organization calledSETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence).SETIbegan early in the Space Age. Only twoyears after the launch of Sputnik, two physicists at Cornell University, Philip Morrison andGiuseppe Cocconi, published an article in the journal Nature in which they noted the relativeease with which radio messages could be sent between the stars. This led to the remarkablesuggestion that it might be possible to detect the presence of extraterrestrial civilizationsusing radio telescopes.TheSETIInstitute's search of nearby star systems is known as ProjectPhoenix. The first Phoenix observations - 2,600 hours over almost six months - took place atthe 64-meter Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia.We can only listen toradio signals from outer space, if we detect any life forms which are millions of light yearsaway that seems the signal transmitted from the source millions of years ago. But radiotransmission from earth begins only nearly 100 years ago that shows the signals from earthmay only reached 100 light years from earth that is the signals reached about 76 starsonly.On August 15, 1977,SETI project atThe Big Ear radio telescopeof The Ohio State
Universitydetected signal of potential non-terrestrialand non-solar systemorigin. It lasted
for 72seconds, the full duration Big Ear observed it, but has not been detected again. Thiswas the onlysignal detected by SETI telescopes that matched the expected signature of aninterstellar signal in theantennaused and is called WOWsignal we are talking about possibilities of life in other galaxies, let’s get back to our solar system.
Life on Mars
There was great excitement in the media when a group of scientists from NASA announcedthey had found evidence of life on Mars.A group of scientists had studied a meteorite(ALH84001) that had been found in the ice of Antarctica. Previously, it had been determinedthat this meteorite had originated on Mars by studying the gaseous content of glass-likecomponents of the meteor. The gas composition matched very well the atmosphere of Mars.This conclusion seems reasonable.So, they presumed they had a meteor from Mars. Nextthey looked for evidence of life on and in the crevices of the meteor. They found two types of molecules that can form as a result of life processes, carbonates and complex moleculescalled polyaromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs.
imageof meteorite ALH84001 under electron microscope
They also found shapes in the rock that resembled those of known microfossils on Earth.Microfossils are fossils of one-celled organisms which are rather tricky to interpret.Well, what does this mean? Obviously, the NASA scientists felt the things just mentioned provided ample evidence to conclude that life once existed on Mars. However, the chemicalsigns could all be due to processes that have nothing to do with life, and the supposedmicrofossils are 100 times smaller than any such fossil found on Earth. Other groups thatstudied this same meteorite concluded that either the temperature of formation of thechemicals was far too high to allow life (over 700 degrees C) or that other chemical signalsfor life were absent.There are reasonable non-life explanations for each of the evidences presented, but we just think that they mean there is life on Mars. The evidencewaschallenged by many other scientists.
Face on Mars
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