Page 3 of 3tification an ambitious American Presidential candidate would need to substantially boost Space Program funding for potential manned missions to Mars. Even recently President Bush seemed to be positioning himself for potential good news with a speech where he upped Nasa's funding by a billion dollars over five years, and spoke about the potential for manned missions to Mars. In real terms the increase is not going to make much difference (Nasa's 5 year budget is $86 billion), but symbolically it is encouraging.

Also, if life has existed on one planet outside our own, then why not on others? Consider that Images from the Hubble Space Telescope indicate that there are over 50 billion galaxies in the Universe. Currently we know of over 100 planets in our galaxy; although undoubtedly there are many, many more. But lets say that there are 100 for the sake of arguement. This means that there are at least 500,000,000,000 planets in the universe. If only 1 in a million of those were Earth-like (that is 1 Earth-like planet for every 50,000 galaxies!) there would still be 500,000 planets. And if only 1 in a thousand of those supported advanced life there would still be 500 Earth like planets with advanced life.

Credit NASA - Pat Rawlings Artist's concept of a possible exploration program to Mars - Did life ever exist on Mars? If so, the best evidence may be fossils preserved in the rocks.

So, on balance it seems extremely unlikely to me that we are alone in the Universe. I suspect, based on nothing much more than my gut feeling, that the Universe is teeming with life and that these are very pessimistic estimates in any case. The problem is that the distances between galaxies is so vast that whilst I think it is almost a given that intelligent life does exist elsewhere in the Universe. It is probably very unlikely that we will make contact with it. Because whilst the statistics positively scream that there are aliens; they also scream that there is very little chance of two of them being close enough to ever know of the others existence. Of course, as Benjamin Disraeli , British Prime Minister in 1868 and from 1874 to 1880 is reckoned to have said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics". So you never know!

This thought can be either quite depressing or quite heartening. Depressing because I doubt we will ever see aliens. Heartening because the fact that we didn't hear or see the tree fall in the woods does not mean it did not. Either way the first step is to find any sign of life outside the Earth, and even the merest glimmer of life would be fabulously exciting. We may never do the 'seek out new civilisations' part of the equation in my lifetime, but at least with two Rovers Nasa still has two shots at the target to keep the 'seek out new life' part alive. Let's hope that at least one of them hits a bullseye!

Copyright - Stuart Brown