Are Homo sapiens a one-off, genetic accident? Scientists have identified a group of planets outside our solar system where the same chemical conditions that may have led to life on Earth exist in what they call the Abiogenesis Zone. It’s also possible that if there is extraterrestrial life, that it has, or will, develop in a totally different way than it did on Earth.
A professor of physics, Kevin Knuth, formerly a research scientist who worked for four years at NASA’s Ames Research Center, attended the 2002 NASA Contact Conference, which focused on serious speculation about extraterrestrials. During the meeting a concerned participant said loudly in a sinister tone, “We have absolutely no idea what is out there!” The silence that followed was palpable as the truth of this statement sunk in.
In recent months several leading astrophysicists from NASA to Harvard have suggested aliens are not science fiction: that advanced and ancient technological civilizations may exist but be beyond our comprehension or ability to detect. Silvano P. Colombano at NASA’s Ames Research Center proposes that we may have missed signals when it comes to looking for UFOs.
Two mind-boggling conjectures about the existence of advanced alien civilizations have been made by Harvard’s chief astronomer and the director of Columbia University’s Astrobiology Center.
By the end of this century, says astrophysicist Martin Rees, we should be able to ask whether or not we live in a multiverse, and how much variety of the laws of physics its constituent ‘universes’ display. The answer to this question, says Rees, “will determine how we should interpret the ‘biofriendly’ universe in which we live (sharing it with any aliens with whom we might one day make contact).”
