Extraterrestrial Life

By Parker Driscoll '17

Since the dawn of man, the question,“are we alone,” has both confounded and excited humans. The question has been at the forefront of the exploration of space, what is considered by many as human’s final frontier. Humans have imagined what lies beyond Earth for some time, and the mystery surrounding extraterrestrial life is emphasized in the popularity of movies and other media devoted to envisioning what exists in the universe. The cliché sci-fi movies and children’s comic books garnered interest in the forms of life that could possibly exist in the universe and fascinate those who enjoy them. However, some people have gone beyond enjoying the occasional sci-fi movie and have devoted their careers to answering this bewildering question.

Beginning in the late 1950’s, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, was founded with the purpose of solving this mystery. Armed with powerful antennas, the foundation projected radio waves deep into space towards two stars that resemble our solar system’s sun in size and age. SETI tuned their radio waves to 1420 Megahertz, an astronomically significant radio frequency, and waited. Assuming that all sophisticated life forms would be emitting excess radio waves just as humans do, the exobiologists planned that if sophisticated life existed beyond Earth, SETI’s signals would be interrupted effectively. This was the first of many attempts to locate extraterrestrial intelligence, and SETI continued to shoot radio waves into space with funding from NASA (SETI).

Today, scientists have different strategies for locating the elusive life forms that may exist. Using powerful telescopes and new criteria for planets that could possibly harbor life, modern scientists can pinpoint where life can exist in the universe. The most basic criteria that scientists use at NASA is known as the “Habitable Zone”, and it describes a range of distance that exists from a central star in a planetary system. If a planet is deemed in the habitable zone, it is far enough away from the central star so the water does not evaporate, while also being close enough so that the water is not constantly frozen (Chou and Potter).

One of the latest and most exciting exoplanet discoveries is that of Trappist-1, a system consisting of seven planets similar to our Earth. The scientists are intrigued by this system as it not only has seven Earth-like planets, but also three of those planets exist in the habitable zone. The system, that is relatively close at only 43 billion light years away, stands out amongst other discoveries as it has the most amount of earth-like planets in the habitable zone that scientists have found yet. Even if these planets do not necessarily yield life, they are great practice for scientists to refine their exo-biologic skills and may also learn something new about the origin of our own Earth (Betz). According to leading scientists, if we maintain our current pace, extraterrestrial life will be discovered between 50-100 years from today. Despite the seemingly slow process, the odds are in our favor for finding life during this century (De La Torre).

One of the more famous contributions to the quest for extraterrestrial life was made by one of the founding members of SETI, Frank Drake. Drake pioneered his own equation, which describes the probability of finding extraterrestrial intelligence based on multiple factors such as: the fraction of stars that have orbiting planets, the fraction of those planets that exists in the habitable zone, and the odds of life forming even if the conditions are perfect, etc. The equation goes on to consider other immense variables such as the lifetime of stars and many other complex factors (SETI). Despite the copious factors, the fact that only a nominal piece of our universe has been explored leads many to believe that life must exist beyond Earth statistically speaking. As new discoveries and breakthroughs are made each day, humanity inches closer to answering the intimidating question and solving one of the greatest mysteries of our existence.

Betz, Laura. Probing Seven Worlds with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. NASA, Lynn Jenner, March 3, 2017, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/probing-seven-worlds-with-nasas-james-webb-space-telescope. May 17, 2017

Chou, Felicia and Potter, Sean. NASA Telescope Reveals Largest Batch of Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planets Around Single Star. NASA, Karen Northon, February 22, 2017, https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-telescope-reveals-largest-batch-of-earth-size-habitable-zone-planets-around . May 17, 2017

De la Torre, Gabriel G . “Toward a new cosmic consciousness: Psychoeducational aspects of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations.” Acta Astronautica, vol. 94, no. 2, Feb. 2014, pp. 577-583. Science Direct, doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2013.08.021SETI. SETI, http://www.seti.org/. Accessed 17 May. 2017.