Possibility of Life Elsewhere

Possibility of Life Elsewhere

All my life I have wondered about the possibility of life elsewhere. What would it be like? Of what would it be made? Are the inhabitants of other planets very different from us?

There was once a time before life, when the Earth was barren and utterly desolate. Our world is now overflowing with life. How did it come about?

Probably, all the organic beings which have ever lived on this Earth, have descended from one primordial form, into which life was first breathed. There is grandeur in this view of life… that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved. (Charles Darwin, the Origin of Species, 1859).

Indeed, all living things on our planet are constructed of organic molecules – cosmic microscopic architectures in which the carbon atom plays a central role. But how, in the absence of life, were carbon-based organic molecules made? How did the first living things arise? How did life evolve to produce beings as elaborate and complex as we, able to explore the mystery of our own origins?

In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think, how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. President Ronald Reagan, United Nations General Assembly, 21 September 1987. Illustration : Elena