The Search for life on other planets is wishful thinking that is futile & will lead to nowhere
We should not overlook the possibility that life processes might have evolved in different ways on other planets. A functional genetic system, capable of accumulating and replicating changes and thus of adaptation and evolution, could theoretically evolve from molecules other than carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen in a different environment. Silicon, like carbon, needs four electrons to fill its outer energy level, and ammonia is even more polar than water. Perhaps under radically different temperatures and pressures, these elements might form molecules as diverse and flexible as those carbon has formed on earth.
The universe has 102 (100,000,000,000,000, 000,000) stars similar to our sun. We don’t know how many of these stars have planets, but it seems increasingly likely that many do. Since. 1996, astronomers have been detecting planets orbiting distant stars. At least 10% of stars are thought to have planetary systems. If only 1 in 10,000 of these planets is the right size, and at the right distance from its duplicate the conditions in which life originated on earth, the “life experiment” will have been repeated 1015 times (that is, a million billion times). It does not seem likely that we are alone.
A dull gray chunk of rock collected in 1984 in Antarctica ignited an uproar about ancient life on Mars with the report that the rock contains evidence of possible life. Analysis of gases trapped within small pockets of the rock indicate it is a meteorite from Mars. It is, in fact, the oldest rock known to science-fully 4.5 billion years old. Evidence collected by the 2004 NASA Mars mission suggests that the surface, now cold and arid, was much warmer when the Antarctic meteorite formed 4.5 billion years ago, that water flowed over its surface, and that it had a carbon dioxide atmosphere-conditions not too different from those that spawned life on earth.
When examined with powerful electron microscopes, carbonate patches within the meteorite exhibit what look like microfossils, some 20 to 100 nanometers in length. One hundred times smaller than any known bacteria, it is not clear they actually are fossils, but the resemblance to bacteria is striking.
Viewed as a whole, the evidence of bacterial life associated with the Mars meteorite is not compelling. Clearly, more painstaking research remains to be done before the discovery can claim a scientific consensus. However, while there is no conclusive evidence of bacterial life associated with this meteorite, it seems very possible that life has evolved on other worlds in addition to our own.
There are planets other than ancient Mars with conditions not unlike those on earth. Europa, a large moon of Jupiter, is a promising candidate. Europa is covered with ice, and photos taken in close orbit in the winter of 1998 reveal seas of liquid water beneath a thin skin of ice. Additional satellite photos taken in 1999 suggest that a few miles under the ice lies a liquid ocean of water larger than earth’s, warmed by the push and pull of the gravitational attraction of Jupiter’s many large satellite moons. The conditions on Europa now are far less hostile to life than the conditions that existed in the oceans of the primitive earth. In coming decades, satellite missions are scheduled to explore this ocean for life.
