The question of whether we are alone in the Universe has haunted humanity for
centuries, but we may now stand poised on the brink of the answer to that
question, as we search for radio signals from other intelligent civilisations. This
search, often known by the acronym SETI (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence),
is a difficult one. Although groups around the world have been searching
intermittently for three decades, it is only now that we have reached the level of
technology where we can make a determined attempt to search all nearby stars
for any sign of life.
A. The primary reason for the search is basic curiosity - the same curiosity about
the natural world that drives all pure science. We want to know whether we are
alone in the Universe. We want to know whether life evolves naturally if given
the right conditions, or whether there is something very special about the Earth
to have fostered the variety of life forms that we see around us on the planet.
The simple detection of a radio signal will be sufficient to answer this most
basic of all questions. In this sense, SETI is another cog in the machinery of
pure science which is continually pushing out the horizon of our knowledge.
However, there are other reasons for being interested in whether life exists
elsewhere. For example, we have had civilisation on Earth for perhaps only a
few thousand years, and the threats of nuclear war and pollution over the last
few decades have told us that our survival may be tenuous. Will we last
another two thousand years or will we wipe ourselves out? Since the lifetime
of a planet like ours is several billion years, we can expect that, if other
civilisations do survive in our galaxy, their ages will range from zero to several
billion years. Thus any other civilisation that we hear from is likely to be far
older, on average, than ourselves. The mere existence of such a civilisation
will tell us that long-term survival is possible, and gives us some cause for
optimism. It is even possible that the older civilisation may pass on the
benefits of their experience in dealing with threats to survival such as nuclear
war and global pollution, and other threats that we haven't yet discovered.
B. In discussing whether we are alone, most SETI scientists adopt two ground
rules. First, UFOS (Unidentified Flying Objects) are generally ignored since
most scientists don't consider the evidence for them to be strong enough to
bear serious consideration (although it is also important to keep an open mind
in case any really convincing evidence emerges in the future). Second, we
make a very conservative assumption that we are looking for a life form that is
pretty well like us, since if it differs radically from us we may well not recognise
it as a life form, quite apart from whether we are able to communicate with it.
In other words, the life form we are looking for may well have two green heads
and seven fingers, but it will nevertheless resemble us in that it should
communicate with its fellows, be interested in the Universe, live on a planet
orbiting a star like our Sun, and perhaps most restrictively, have a chemistry,
like us, based on carbon and water.
C. Even when we make these assumptions, our understanding of other life forms
is still severely limited. We do not even know, for example, how many stars
have planets, and we certainly do not know how likely it is that life will arise
naturally, given the right conditions. However, when we look at the 100 billion
stars in our galaxy (the Milky Way), and 100 billion galaxies in the observable
Universe, it seems inconceivable that at least one of these planets does not
have a life form on it; in fact, the best educated guess we can make, using the
little that we do know about the conditions for carbon-based life, leads us to
estimate that perhaps one in 100,000 stars might have a life-bearing planet
orbiting it. That means that our nearest neighbours are perhaps 100 light years
away, which is almost next door in astronomical terms.
