Alien Life - Official: it's stranger than you think...

The study has been commissioned by NASA to report on the current state of scientific knowledge regarding the limits of life in our solar system and beyond. The mandate for the report called for recommendations on what further research can be conducted so that “…NASA missions would be able to recognize, conserve and, study alien life that is encountered.” If funding allows, NASA will use the new report as a roadmap to plan future interplanetary robotic expiditions, new experimental devices, and ultimately help move towards the first permanent human outpost on another world.

One of the problems in investigating non-terrestrial life, is the understandable danger of framing the new, unknown and unexplained in terms that are familiar. For example, the concept of extraterrestrial life in popular culture is almost always made in our own human image. Usually, our fictional aliens have arms with fingers, legs, two eyes and a mouth. However, while these human-like characteristics may make our fictional stories more interesting, the reality is that having E.T. over for a cup of tea is extremely unlikely. A more realistic scenario would involve watching our astronauts living in habitats on the surface of Mars – and realising only years after their arrival that the slightly orange discoloration that they found on their mugs after washing them wasn’t dust, but Martian microbes struggling for any little bit of water they could find. E.T. had arrived without an invitation – and they had been drinking him in their tea, for years.

One of the great debate openers for whether or not life exists in our galaxy with which we may be able to communicate was written in mathematical form in 1961 by radio astronomer Frank Drake. Known as Drake’s Equation, it has always been controversial. Depending upon the data input into the variables for Drake’s Equation the number of intelligent civilisations in our galaxy capable of having a chat with us ranges from near zero to many thousands. Recently, a revised version of the Drake Equation called the ‘Rare Earth Theory’ suggests that there are many other variables not accounted for by Drake - and that at best, we’re most likely alone in our galaxy – and that life in the universe is very rare indeed. In any case, even if the numbers were in favour of thousands of civilisations in our neighbourhood, the problem remains that at this time we have no way of visiting. Voyager 1, which was launched from earth in 1977 with a current velocity at around 17km/sec (61,000 km/hour). If Voyager were travelling in the correct direction, it would reach the star nearest to earth in around 75,000 years.