Abstract
It now appears very unlikely that our astronauts will encounter any kinds of life in our solar system that are of the intelligent persuasion anywhere close to our Earth-bound multicellular animal or even human types. However, as I indicated in Chap. 1, many of our space scientists now think it is possible, and a few believe even likely, that early stage primitive forms of life may have been able to evolve in the earlier histories of some of our inner planets (e.g., Venus and Mars) or on some of the moons of the outer planets, and some of these creatures may still be alive today. Although single-cell or microbial forms of life might still be present today in some locations, no multicellular forms are likely, assuming, of course, that life elsewhere is based on something equivalent to our “cells”. If man wants to search for life forms that are anywhere close to being like us in terms of being intelligent and even capable of communicating with us in some manner, we will need to extend our search for ET to other worlds outside our own solar system. At least for the near future, rocket science will not help us very much with this task. Mankind will need to become incredibly patient and somehow learn to cope with the real possibility that it may be our great-great-great…grandchildren and not us that will first view the exciting pictures and other data/information that our incredibly fast unmanned inter-stellar rocket ships will beam back to us sometime in the far distant future. This would, of course, assume that the speed of light is our ultimate speed barrier, or that nothing like “worm holes” or other fancy future technologies could be developed that might make it possible to somehow cancel or alter what appears to be a insurmountable and universal time/space restraint.
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Notes
- 1.
In early October, 2012, a team of astronomers led by Stephane Udre and Xavier Dumusque used the 3.5 m telescope at the European Southern Observatory to verify that the closest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri, which is located only 4.35 light years from the Earth, hosts an exoplanet . This planet is similar in size to Earth, orbits its home star every 3.3 days and, therefore, has a mean surface temperature of 2,240 °F which would definitely not be friendly to carbon-based life forms like us. However, astronomers are now intently studying the Alpha Centauri triple star system for possible evidence of other exoplanets that might be orbiting in cooler life friendly habitable zones.
- 2.
Meteorites are small rocky or metal objects that are the leftover remnants of the early stages of stellar system formation. These objects (which include the “shooting stars” we see in the nighttime sky) can range in size from grains of sand to several feet or more in diameter. The smaller ones are capable of breaking through the roofs of homes and severely bruising the hips of ladies sleeping on couches, while the larger ones can destroy entire cities.
- 3.
It is important that the reader know that stars that are the size of our own sun or smaller, while making up the majority of all stars in the universe, do not explode when they start running low on their primary supply of fuel, i.e., hydrogen, that is needed to allow them to begin creating their new alternate fuel source of helium and other heavier elements (e.g., carbon, silicon, oxygen). Instead of exploding in a massive supernova event (or an even more intense “hypernova” explosion in the case of much larger supergiant stars), these smaller stars will slowly begin expanding in size to become what astronomer’s call “red giant” stars. In the case of our sun, in another 4 or 5 billion years, the sun will expand so much that the outer layer of the new giant star will completely envelop (and burn up) the Earth.
- 4.
It is important to note that the concentration levels of even the more dense of these interstellar gas/dust cloud regions are quite diffuse and may contain considerably fewer than 100 atoms per cubic centimeter. In marked contrast, the Earth’s atmosphere at sea level today has an average density of approximately 2,500 air molecules per cubic centimeter.
- 5.
Because the longer wavelength radio, microwave, and infrared waves originating from far distant interstellar gas and dust clouds are so incredibly weak, the radio astronomers at the Green Bank telescope facility in West Virginia had to push the local government of the surrounding community to actually pass a law to forbid the use of cell phones by their citizens in a several mile radius around the telescope facility. The electronic interference from the average cell phone is so intense that it could easily over power the weak radio signals that the astronomers were trying to collect from the distant dust and gas clouds. So, in a very real sense, thousands of private citizens in the Green Bank area are actively participating as “co-investigators” on this exciting search for life in the universe.
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Cranford, J.L. (2015). When Will Mankind Achieve “First Contact” with Extraterrestrial Life Forms. In: Astrobiological Neurosystems. Astronomers' Universe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10419-5_2
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