Chapter 15

Michael Seeds Dana Backman
Chapter 15 Life on Other Worlds
Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?
- John Milton PARADISE LOST
As a living thing, you have been promoted from darkness.

The atoms of carbon, oxygen, and other heavy elements that are necessary components of your body did not exist at the beginning of the universe. They were created by successive generations of stars.
The elements from which you are made are common everywhere in the observable universe. So, it is possible that life began on other worlds and evolved to intelligence there as well.
If so, perhaps these other civilizations will be detected from Earth. Future astronomers may discover distant alien species completely different from any life on Earth.
Your goal in this chapter is to try to understand the most intriguing of puzzlesthe origin and evolution of life on Earth and other worlds.
The Nature of Life
What is life?
Philosophers have struggled with that question for thousands of years. It is not possible to answer it in a single chapter.
The Nature of Life
An attempt at a general definition of what living things do, distinguishing them from nonliving things, might be as follows.
Life is a process by which an organism extracts energy from the surroundings, maintains itself, and modifies the surroundings to promote its own survival and reproduction.
The Nature of Life
One very important observation is that all living things on Earth, no matter how apparently different, share certain characteristics in how they perform the process of life.
The Physical Basis of Life
The physical basis of life on Earth is the element carbon.

Due to the way carbon atoms bond to each other and to other atoms, they can from long, complex, stable chains that are capable of storing and transmitting information. A large amount of information of some sort is necessary to maintain the forms and control the functions of living things.
Carbon may not be crucial to life. Science fiction authors have speculated that silicon could be substituted for carbon because the two elements share some chemical properties.
However, this seems unlikely because silicon chains are harder to assemble and disassemble than their carbon counterparts and cant be as lengthy.
Even stranger life forms have been proposedbased on electromagnetic fields and ionized gas.
None of these possibilities can be ruled out. However, although these hypothetical life forms make for fascinating speculation, they cant be studied systematically the way life on Earth can be.
This chapter is concerned with the origin and evolution of life as it is on Earth, based on carbonnot because of lack of imagination, but because it is the only form of life about which we know anything.
Even carbon-based life has its mysteries.

What makes a lump of carbon-based molecules a living thing? An important part of the answer lies in the transmission of information from one molecule to another.
Information Storage and Duplication
Almost every action performed by a living cell is carried out by chemicals it manufactures.
Cells must store recipes for all these chemicals, use the recipes when they need them, and pass them on to their offspring.
There are three important points to note about DNA.
One, the chemical recipes of life are stored in each cell as information on DNA molecules.
These molecules resemble a ladder with rungs that are composed of chemical bases. The recipe information is expressed by the sequence of ladder rungs, providing instructions to guide chemical reactions within the cell.

Two, DNA instructions normally are expressed by being copied into a messenger molecule called RNA that causes molecular units called amino acids to be connected into large molecules called proteins.
Proteins serve as the cells basic structural molecules or as enzymes that control chemical reactions.
Three, the instructions stored in DNA are genetic information passed along to offspring.
The DNA molecule reproduces itself when a cell divides so that each new cell contains a copy of the original information.
To produce viable offspring, a cell must be able to make copies of its DNA.
Surprisingly, it is important for the continued existence of all life that not all the copies be exact duplicates.
Modifying the Information
Earths environment changes continuously. To survive, species must change as their food supply, climate, or home terrain changes.
If the information stored in DNA could not change, then life would quickly go extinct.
The process by which life adjusts itself to its changing environment is called biological evolution.
When an organism reproduces, its offspring receives a copy of its DNA. Sometimes external effects such as radiation alter the DNA during the parent organisms lifetime, and sometimes mistakes are made in the copying process.
Thus, occasionally, the copy is slightly different from the original.
Offspring born with random alterations to their DNA are called mutants.
Most mutations make no difference. Some, however, are fatalkilling the afflicted organisms before they can reproduce. In rare but vitally important cases, a mutation can actually help an organism survive.
These changes produce variation among the members of a species.

All the squirrels in the park may look the samebut they carry a range of genetic variation. Some may have slightly longer tails or faster-growing claws.
These variations make almost no difference until the environment changes.

If the environment becomes colder, a squirrel with a heavier coat of fur will, on average, survive longer and produce more offspring than its normal contemporaries. Similarly, the offspring that inherit this beneficial variation will also live longer and have more offspring of their own.
These differing rates of survival and reproduction are examples of natural selection.
Over time, the beneficial variation increases in frequency, and a species can evolve until the entire population shares the trait. In this way, natural selection adapts species to their changing environmentsby selecting, from the huge array of random variations, those that would most benefit the survival of the species.
It is a common misconception that evolution is random, but that is not true.

The underlying variation within species is random. Natural selection, though, is not randombecause progressive changes in a species are directed by changes in the environment.
Life in the Universe
It is obvious that the 4.5 billion chemical bases that make up human DNA did not just come together in the right order by chance. The key to understanding the origin of life lies in the processes of evolution.
The complex interplay of environmental factors with the DNA of generation after generation of organisms drove some life forms to become more sophisticated over timeuntil they became the unique and specialized creatures on Earth today.
This means that life on Earth could have begun very simplyeven as simple a form as carbon chain molecules able to copy themselves. Of course, this is a hypothesis for which you can seek evidence.
What evidence exists regarding the origin of life on Earth?
The Origin of Life on Earth
The oldest fossils are all the remains of sea creatures.

This indicates that life began in the sea.
However, identifying the oldest fossils is not easy.
Fossils billions of years old are difficult to recognize because the earliest living things contained no easily preserved hard parts like bones or shells. They were also microscopic.
Fossils from western Australia that are more than 3 billion years old contain features that experts identify as stromatolites fossilized remains of colonies of single-celled organisms.
The evidence, though scarce, indicates that simple organisms lived in Earths oceans 3.4 billion or more years agoless than 1.2 billion years after Earth formed.
Where did these simple organisms come from?
An important experiment performed by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1952 sought to recreate the conditions in which life on Earth began.
The Miller experiment consisted of a sterile, sealed glass container holding water, hydrogen, ammonia, and methane.
An electric arc inside the apparatus created sparksto simulate the effects of lightning in Earths early atmosphere.
Miller and Urey let the experiment run for a week and then analyzed the material inside.
They found that the interaction between the electric arc and the simulated atmosphere had produced many organic molecules from the raw material of the experimentincluding such important building blocks of life as amino acids.
When the experiment was run again using different energy sourcessuch as hot silica to represent molten lava spilling into the oceansimilar molecules were produced.
Even the UV radiation present in sunlight was sufficient to produce complex organic molecules.
According to updated models of the formation of the solar system and Earth, Earths early atmosphere probably consisted of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor instead of the mix of hydrogen, ammonia, and methane assumed by Miller and Urey.
When gases corresponding to the newer understanding of the early Earth atmosphere are processed in a Miller apparatus, lesser but still significant numbers of organic molecules are created.
The Miller experiment is important because it shows that complex organic molecules form naturally in a wide variety of circumstances.
Lightning, sunlight, and hot lava pouring into the oceans are just some of the energy sources that naturally rearrange simple common molecules into the complex molecules that make life possible.
If you could travel back in time, you would find Earths first oceans filled with a rich mixture of organic compounds called the primordial soup. Many of these organic compounds would have been able to link up to form larger molecules.
For example, amino acids can link together to form proteins by joining ends and releasing a water molecule.
It was initially thought that this must have occurred in sun-warmed tidal pools where organic molecules were concentrated by evaporation.
However, violent episodes of volcanism and catastrophic meteorite impacts would probably have destroyed any evolving life forms at the surface.
So, it is now believed that the early linkage of complex molecules more likely took place on the ocean floor perhaps near the hot springs at midocean ridges.
These complex organic molecules were still not living things.

Even though some proteins may have contained hundreds of amino acids, they did not reproduce. Rather, they linked and broke apart at random.
However, some molecules are more stable than others, and some bond together more easily than others. So, scientists hypothesize that a process of chemical evolution eventually concentrated the various smaller molecules into the most stable larger forms.
Eventually, according to the hypothesis, somewhere in the oceans, after sufficient time, a molecule formed that could copy itself. At that point, the chemical evolution of molecules became the biological evolution of living things.
An alternative theory for the origin of life holds that reproducing molecules may have arrived here from space.
Radio astronomers have found a wide variety of organic molecules in the interstellar medium. Similar compounds have been found inside meteorites.
The Miller experiment showed how easy it is to create organic molecules. So, it is not surprising to find them in space.
Although speculation is fun, the hypothesis that life arrived on Earth from space is presently more difficult to test than the hypothesis that life on Earth originated on Earth.
Whether the first reproducing molecules formed here on Earth or in space, the important thing is that they could have formed by natural processes.
Scientists know enough about these processes to feel confident about themeven though some of the steps remain unknown.
The details of the evolution of the first cells are unknown. Nevertheless, the first reproducing molecule to surround itself with a protective membrane must have gained an important survival advantage.
Experiments have shown that microscopic spheres the size of cells containing organic molecules form relatively easily in water.
So, the evolution of the cell membrane is not surprising.
The first cells must have been single-celled organisms much like modern bacteria.
As you learned earlier, these kinds of cells are preserved in stromatolites mineral formations formed by layers of photosynthetic bacteria and shallow ocean sediments.
Stromatolites formed in rocks with radioactive ages of 3 billion years. They still form in some places today.
Stromatolites and other photosynthetic organisms would have begun adding oxygen, a product of photosynthesis, to Earths early atmosphere.
An oxygen abundance of only 0.1 percent would have created an ozone screen protecting organisms from the suns ultraviolet radiation and later allowing life to colonize the land.
Over the course of eons, the natural processes of evolution gave rise to stunningly complex multicellular life formswith their own widely differing ways of life.
It is a common misconception to imagine that life is too complex to have evolved from such simple beginnings.
It is possible because small variations can accumulate. That accumulation, however, requires huge amounts of time.
Geologic Time
Life has existed on Earth for at least 3.4 billion years. There is no evidence, though, of anything more than simple organisms until about 540 million years agowhen life suddenly branched into a wide variety of complex forms like the trilobites.
Geologic Time
This sudden increase in complexity is known as the Cambrian explosion. It marks the beginning of the Cambrian period.
Geologic Time
If you represented the entire history of Earth on a scale diagram, the Cambrian explosion would be near the top of the column.
Geologic Time
The emergence of most animals familiar to you today including fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals would be crammed into the topmost part of the chart, above the Cambrian explosion.
Geologic Time
If you magnify that portion of the diagram, you can get a better idea of when those events occurred in the history of life.
Geologic Time
Humanoid creatures have walked the Earth for about 3 million years.
This is a long time by the standard of a human lifetime but it makes only a narrow red line at the very top of the diagram.
Geologic Time
All of recorded history would be a microscopically thin line at the very top of the column.
Geologic Time
To understand just how thin that line is, imagine that the entire 4.6billion-year history of the Earth has been compressed onto a yearlong video.
Geologic Time
Imagine that you began watching the video on January 1.

You would not see any signs of life until March or early April. The slow evolution of the first simple forms would take up the next six or seven months.
Geologic Time
Suddenly, in mid-November, you would see the trilobites and other complex organisms of the Cambrian explosion.
Geologic Time
You would see no life of any kind on land until November 28.
Once it appeared though, it would diversify quickly.
Geologic Time
By December 12, you would see dinosaurs walking the continents. By the evening of Christmas Day, they would be gone, and mammals and birds would be on the rise.
Geologic Time
If you watched closely, you might see the first humanoid forms by suppertime on New Years Eve. By late evening, you could see humans making the first stone tools.
Geologic Time
The Stone Age would last until 11:59 PM. The first towns and cities would then appear.
Geologic Time
Suddenly, things would begin to happen at lighting speed.

Babylon would flourish, the Pyramids would rise, and Troy would fall. The Christian era would begin 14 seconds before the New Year. Rome would fall. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance would flicker past. The American and French revolutions would occur one second before the end of the video.
Geologic Time
By imagining Earths history as an yearlong video, you have gained some perspective on the rise of life.
Tremendous amounts of time were needed for the first simple living things to evolve in the oceans. However, as life became more complex, new forms arose more and more quickly as the hardest problems how to reproduce, how to take energy efficiently from the environment, how to move aroundwere solved.
Geologic Time
The easier problemswhat to eat, where to live, and how to raise youngwere solved in different ways by different organisms, leading to the diversity that you see today.
Geologic Time
Even intelligencethat which appears to set humans apart from other animals may be a unique solution to an evolutionary problem posed to humanitys ancient ancestors.
A smart animal is better able to escape predators, outwit its prey, and feed and shelter itself and its offspring. So, under certain conditions, evolution is likely to select for intelligence.
Geologic Time
Could intelligent life arise on other worlds?

To try to answer this question, you can estimate the chances of any type of life arising on other worlds and then assess the likelihood of that life developing intelligence.
Life in Our Solar System
Could there be carbon-based life elsewhere in our solar system?

Liquid water seems to be a requirement of carbonbased lifenecessary both for vital chemical reactions and as a medium to transport nutrients and wastes. It is not surprising that life developed in Earths oceans and stayed there for billions of years before it was able to colonize the land.
Scientists are in agreement that any world harboring living things must have significant quantities of some type of liquid.
Water is a cosmically abundant substance with properties such as high heat capacity that set it apart from other common molecules that are liquid at the temperatures of planetary surfaces.
Many worlds in the solar system can be eliminated immediately as hosts for life.
Liquid water is not possible there.
The moon and Mercury are airless, and water would boil away into space immediately.
Venus has traces of water vapor in its atmosphere. However, it is too hot for liquid water to survive on the surface.
The Jovian planets have deep atmospheres and, at a certain level, it is likely that water condenses into liquid droplets.
However, it seems unlikely that life could have originated there.

The Jovian planets do not have solid surfaces. Isolated water droplets could never mingle to mimic the rich primordial oceans of Earth, where organic molecules grew and interacted. Also, powerful currents in the gas giants atmospheres would quickly carry any reproducing molecules that did form there into inhospitable regions of the atmosphere.
As you have learned, at least one of the Jovian satellites could potentially support life.
Jupiters moon Europa appears to have a liquid-water ocean below its icy crust.
Minerals dissolved in the water could provide a rich source of raw material for chemical evolution. Europas ocean is kept warm and liquid now by tidal heating.
There also may be liquid water layers under the surfaces of Ganymede and Callisto.
However, that can change as the orbits of the moons interact.

Europa, Ganymede, and Calisto may have been frozen solid at other times in their histories, destroying organisms that had developed there.
Saturns moon Titan is rich in organic molecules.

You have learned how sunlight converts the methane in Titans atmosphere into organic smog particles that settle to the surface. The chemistry of any life that could evolve from these molecules and survive in Titans lakes of methane is unknown.
It is fascinating to consider possibilities. However, Titans extremely low temperature of 180C (290F) could make chemical reactions slow to the point where life processes seem unlikely.
Observations of water venting from the south-polar region of Saturns moon Enceladus show that it has liquid water below its crust. It is possible that life could exist in that water.
However, the moon is very small and has been warmed by tidal heating that may operate only occasionally.
Enceladus may not have had plentiful liquid water for the extended time necessary for the rise of life.
Mars is the most likely place for life to exist in the solar system.
As you have learned, there is a great deal of evidence that liquid water once flowed on its surface.
Even so, results from searches for signs of life on Mars are not encouraging.
The robotic spacecraft Viking 1 and Viking 2 landed on Mars in 1976 and tested soil samples for living organisms. Some of the tests had puzzling semi-positive results that scientists hypothesize were caused by nonbiological chemical reactions in the soil. No evidence clearly indicates the presence of life or even of organic molecules in the Martian soil.
In 1996 there were prominent news stories regarding chemical and physical traces of life on Mars discovered inside a Martian meteorite found in Antarctica.
Scientists were excited by the announcement. However, they immediately began testing the evidence.
Their results suggest that the unusual chemical signatures in the rock may have formed by processes that did not involve life.
Tiny features in the rock that were originally taken to be fossils of ancient Martian organisms could be non-biological mineral formations.
This is the only direct evidence yet found regarding potential life on Mars. It remains highly controversial, though.
Conclusive evidence of life on Mars may have to wait until a geologist from Earth can scramble down dry Martian streambeds and crack open rocks looking for fossils.
There is no strong evidence for the existence of life elsewhere in the solar system. Now, your search will take you to distant planetary systems.
Life in Other Planetary Systems
Could life exist in other planetary systems?

You already know that there are many different kinds of stars and that many of these stars have planetary systems. As a first step toward answering the question, you can try to identify the kinds of stars that seem most likely to have stable planetary systems where life could evolve.
If a planet is to be a suitable home for living things, it must be in a stable orbit around its sun.
This is simple in a planetary system like our own. However, most planet orbits in binary star systems are unstable unless the component stars are very close together or very far apart.
Astronomers can calculate that, in binary systems with stars separated by distances of a few AU, the planets should eventually be swallowed up by one of the stars or ejected from the system.
Half the stars in the galaxy are members of binary systems, and many of them are unlikely to support life on planets.
Moreover, just because a star is single does not necessarily make it a good candidate for sustaining life.
Earth required between 0.5 and 1 billion years to produce the first cells and 4.6 billion years for intelligence to emerge.
Massive stars that live only a few million years will not do.
If the history of life on Earth is at all representative, then stars more massive and luminous than about spectral type F5 are too short-lived for complex life to develop.
Main-sequence stars of types G and K, and possibly some of the faint M stars, are the best candidates.
The temperature of a planet is also important.

That depends on the type of star it orbits and its distance from the star.
Astronomers have defined a habitable zone around a star as a region within which planets have temperatures that permit the existence of liquid water.
The suns habitable zone extends from around the orbit of Venus to the orbit of Marswith Earth right in the middle. A low-luminosity star has a small habitable zone and a high-luminosity star has a large one.
Scientists on Earth are finding life in places previously judged inhospitable.

These include the bottoms of ice-covered lakes in Antarctica and far underground inside solid rock. Life has also been found in boiling hot springs with highly acidic water.
As a result, it is difficult for scientists to pin down a range of environments and state with certainty that life cannot exist outside those conditions.
You should also note that three of the environments listed as possible havens for lifeTitan, Europa, and Enceladusare in the outer solar system and lie far outside the suns traditional life zone.
Stable planets inside the habitable zones of long-lived stars are the places where life seems most likely. However, given the tenacity and resilience of Earths life forms, there might be other, seemingly inhospitable, places in the universe where life exists.
Intelligent Life in the Universe
Visiting extrasolar planets is, for now, impossible. Nevertheless, if other civilizations exist, it is possible that humans can communicate with them.
Intelligent Life in the Universe
Nature places restrictions on such conversations. The main problem, though, lies in the unknown life expectancy of civilizations.
Travel Between the Stars
The distances between stars are almost beyond comprehension.

A space shuttle would take about 150,000 years to reach the nearest star.
The obvious way to overcome these huge distances is with tremendously fast spaceships. However, even the closest stars are many light-years away.
Nothing can exceed the speed of light.
Accelerating a spaceship close to the speed of light takes huge amounts of energy.
Even if you travel more slowly, your rocket would require massive amounts of fuel. If you were piloting a spaceship with the mass of 100 tons (the size of a yacht) to the nearest star4 lightyears awayand you wanted to travel at half the speed of light so as to arrive in 8 years, the trip would require 400 times as much energy as the entire United States consumes in a year.
These limitations not only make it difficult for humans to leave the solar system, but they would also make it difficult for aliens to visit Earth.
Reputable scientists have studied unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and have never found any evidence that Earth is being visited or has ever been visited by aliens.
Humans are unlikely to ever meet aliens face-to-face. However, communication by radio across interstellar distances takes relatively little energy.
Radio Communication
Nature puts restrictions on travel through space. It also restricts astronomers ability to communicate with distant civilizations by radio.
Radio Communication
One restriction is based on simple physics.

Radio signals are electromagnetic waves and travel at the speed of light. Due to the distances between the stars, the speed of radio waves would severely limit astronomers ability to carry on normal conversations with distant civilizations. Decades could elapse between asking a question and getting an answer.
Radio Communication
So, rather than try to begin a conversation, one group of astronomers decided in 1974 to broadcast a simple message of greeting toward the globular cluster M1326,000 light-years awayusing the Arecibo radio telescope.
When the signal arrives 6,000 years in the future, alien astronomers may be able to decode it.
Radio Communication
The Arecibo beacon is an anticoded message.

That is, it is intended to be decoded by beings about whom we know nothing except that they build radio telescopes.
Radio Communication
The message is a string of 1,679 pulses and gaps.

Pulses represent 1s Gaps represent 0s
Radio Communication
The string can be arranged in only two possible ways:

23 rows of 73 73 rows of 23
Radio Communication
The second arrangement forms a picture containing information about life on Earth.
Radio Communication
Although the 1974 Arecibo beacon was the only powerful signal sent purposely from Earth to other solar systems, Earth is sending out many other signals.
Short-wave radio signals, such as TV and FM, have been leaking into space for the past 50 years or so.
Radio Communication
Any civilization within 50 light-years could already have detected Earths civilization.
This works both ways, though. Alien signalswhether intentional messages of friendship or the blather of their equivalent to daytime TVcould be arriving at Earth now. Astronomers all over the world are pointing radio telescopes at the most likely stars and listening for alien civilizations.
Radio Communication
Which channels should astronomers monitor?

Wavelengths longer than 100 cm would get lost in the background noise of Milky Way. Wavelengths shorter than about 1 cm are absorbed in Earths atmosphere. Between those wavelengths is a radio window that is open for communication.
Radio Communication
Even this restricted window contains millions of possible radio-frequency bands, and is too wide to monitor easily. However, astronomers may have found a way to narrow the search.
Radio Communication
Within this window lie the 21-cm spectrum line of neutral hydrogen and the 18-cm line of OH.
The interval between those lines has low background interference and is named the water hole because H plus OH yields water.
Radio Communication
Any civilizations sophisticated enough to do radio astronomy must know of these lines and appreciate their significance in the same way as do Earthlings.
Radio Communication
A number of searches for extraterrestrial radio signals have been made, and some are now under way. This field of study is known as SETI, Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.
Radio Communication
It has generated heated debate among astronomers, philosophers, theologians, and politicians.
Congress funded a NASA search for a short time. However, it ended support in the early 1990s because it feared public reaction. In fact, the annual cost of a major search is only about as much as a single Air Force attack helicopter. Much of the reluctance to fund searches probably stems from issues other than cost.
Radio Communication
One point to keep in mind is that the discovery of alien intelligence would cause a huge change in humans worldview akin to Galileos discovery that the moons of Jupiter do not go around the Earth.
Some turmoil would inevitably result.
Radio Communication
In spite of the controversy, the search continues.

The NASA SETI project cancelled by Congress was renamed Project Phoenix and completed using private funds. The SETI Institute, founded in 1984, managed Project Phoenix plus several other important searches. Currently, it is building a new radio telescope array in northern Californiacollaborating with the University of California, Berkeley, and partly funded by Paul Allen of Microsoft.
Radio Communication
There is even a way for you to help with searches.

The Berkeley SETI team (separate from the SETI Institute), with the support of the Planetary Society, has recruited about 4 million owners of personal computers that are connected to the Internet. Participants download a screen saver that searches data files from the Arecibo radio telescope for signals whenever the owner is not using the computer. For information, locate the seti@home project at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/.
Radio Communication
The search continues However, radio astronomers struggle to hear anything against the worsening babble of noise from human civilization.
Radio Communication
Wider and wider sections of the electromagnetic spectrum are being used for Earthly communication. This, combined with stray electromagnetic noise from electronic devices, including everything from computers to refrigerators, makes hearing faint radio signals difficult.
It would be ironic if humans fail to detect signals from another world because our own world has become too noisy.
Radio Communication
Ultimately, the chances of success depend on the number of inhabited worlds in the galaxy.
How Many Inhabited Worlds?
Given enough time, the searches will find other worlds with civilizations assuming that there are at least a few out there.
If intelligence is common, scientists should find signals relatively soonwithin the next few decades. If intelligence is rare, it may take much longer.
Simple arithmetic can give you an estimate of the number of technological civilizations in Milky Way with which you might communicate, Nc. The formula proposed for discussions about Nc is named the Drake equation after the radio astronomer Frank Drake, a pioneer in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
The version of the Drake equation presented here is modified slightly from its original form.
Nc = N f P nHZ f L f I FS
N* is the number of stars in our galaxy, and fP represents the fraction of stars that have planets.
If all single stars have planets, fP is about 0.5.
The factor nHZ is the average number of planets in each solar system suitably placed in the habitable zone.
This factor actually means the number of planets possessing liquid water.
Europa and Enceladus in our solar system show that liquid water can exist due to tidal heating outside the conventional habitable zone that in our system contains Earths orbit. So, nHZ may be larger than had been previously thought.
The factor fL is the fraction of suitable planets on which life begins, and fI is the fraction of those planets where life evolved to intelligence.
These factors can be roughly estimated. However, the final factor, FS, is much more uncertain.
FS is the fraction of a stars life during which the life form is communicative.
If a society survives at a technological level for only 100 years, the chances of communicating with it are small. A society that stabilizes and remains technological for a long time, however, is much more likely to be detected.
For a star with a life span of 10 billion years, FS can range from 10-8 for extremely short-lived societies to 10-4 for societies that survive for a million years.
The table summarizes what many scientists consider a reasonable range of values for FS and the other factors.
If the optimistic estimates are true, there could be a communicative civilization within a few tens of light-years of Earth. If the pessimistic estimates are true, Earth may be the only planet that is capable of communication within thousands of the nearest galaxies.
What Are We?
There are over four thousand religions around the world, and nearly all hold that humans have a dual nature.
We are physical objects made of atoms, but we are also spiritual beings.
Science is unable to examine the spiritual side of existence, but it can tell us about our physical nature.
What Are We?
You are made of very old atoms.

The matter you are made of appeared in the big bang and was cooked into a wide range of elements inside stars. Your atoms may have been inside at least two or three generations of stars. Eventually, your atoms became part of a nebula that contracted to form the sun and the planets of the solar system.
What Are We?
Your atoms have been part of Earth for the last 4.6 billion years.
They have been recycled many times through dinosaurs, stromatolites, fish, bacteria, grass, birds, worms, and other living things.
What Are We?
Now, you are using your atoms but, when you are done with them, they will go back to Earth and be used again and again.
When the sun swells into a red giant star and dies in a few billion years, Earths atmosphere and oceans will be driven away. Then, at least the outer few kilometers of Earths crust will be vaporized and blown outward to become part of the nebula around the white-dwarf remains of the sun.
What Are We?
Your atoms are destined to return to the interstellar medium and will become part of future generations of stars, planets, and perhaps living things.
What Are We?
The message of astronomy is that humans are not just observers.

We are participants and we are part of the universe. Among all the galaxies, stars, planets, planetesimals, and bits of matter, humans are objects that can think. That means we can understand what we are.
What Are We?
Is the human race the only thinking species?

If so, we bear the sole responsibility to understand and admire the universe. The detection of signals from another civilization would demonstrate that we are not alone. Such communication would end the self-centered isolation of humanity and stimulate a reevaluation of the meaning of human existence.

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Michael Seeds Dana Backman

Chapter 15 Life on Other Worlds

Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?

- John Milton PARADISE LOST

As a living thing, you have been promoted from darkness.

The Nature of Life

The Nature of Life

The Nature of Life

The Physical Basis of Life

The physical basis of life on Earth is the element carbon.

The Physical Basis of Life

The Physical Basis of Life

The Physical Basis of Life

The Physical Basis of Life

Even carbon-based life has its mysteries.

Information Storage and Duplication

Information Storage and Duplication

There are three important points to note about DNA.

Information Storage and Duplication

Information Storage and Duplication

Information Storage and Duplication

Information Storage and Duplication

Modifying the Information

Modifying the Information

Modifying the Information

Modifying the Information

These changes produce variation among the members of a species.

Modifying the Information

These variations make almost no difference until the environment changes.

Modifying the Information

Modifying the Information

It is a common misconception that evolution is random, but that is not true.

Life in the Universe

Life in the Universe

Life in the Universe

The Origin of Life on Earth

The oldest fossils are all the remains of sea creatures.

However, identifying the oldest fossils is not easy.

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

These complex organic molecules were still not living things.

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth

The Origin of Life on Earth