Preparing for Alien Life

At a recent event sponsored by NASA and the Library of Congress, a group of scientists and scholars explored how we might prepare for the inevitable discovery of life beyond Earth.

n 1960, the astronomer Francis Drake pointed a radio telescope located in Green Bank, West Virginia, toward two Sun-like stars 11 light years away. His hope: to pick up a signal that would prove intelligent life might be out there. Fifty years have gone by since Drake's pioneering SETI experiment, and we've yet to hear from the aliens.

But thanks to a host of discoveries, the idea that life might exist beyond Earth now seems more plausible than ever. For one, we've learned that life can thrive in the most extreme environments here on Earth - from deep-sea methane seep and Antarctic sea ice to acidic rivers and our driest deserts.

We've also found that liquid water isn't unique to our planet. Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moons Ganymede and Europa harbor large oceans beneath their icy surfaces. Even Saturn's largest moon, Titan, could spawn some kind of life in its lakes and rivers of methane-ethane.

And then there's the discovery of exoplanets, with more than 1800 alien worlds beyond our Solar System identified so far. In fact, astronomers estimate there may be a trillion planets in our galaxy alone, one-fifth of which may be Earth-like. As Carl Sagan famously said: "The Universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space."

Now some scientists believe the hunt for life beyond Earth may well pay off in our lifetimes. "There have been 10,000 generations of humans before us. Ours could be the first to know," said SETI astronomer Seth Shostak.

But what happens once we do? How would we handle the discovery? And what would be its impact on society?

This was the focus of a conference organized last September by the NASA Astrobiology Program and the Library of Congress. For two days, a group of scientists, historians, philosophers and theologians from around the world explored how we might prepare for the inevitable discovery of life - microbial or intelligent - elsewhere in our Universe.

The symposium was hosted by Steven J. Dick, the second annual Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress. The video presentations can be viewed here.

"Three Horse Races" Of course, the impact of discovery will depend on the specific scenario. In a talk titled "Current Approaches to Finding Life Beyond Earth, and What Happens If We Do," Shostak described three ways - or three "horse races" - for finding life in space.

The rest is here:
Preparing for Alien Life