Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T15:07:36.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The evolution of life in the Universe: are we alone?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2006

Jill C. Tarter*
Affiliation:
SETI Institute, 515 N Whisman Road, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA email: [email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In his book Plurality of Worlds, Steven J. Dick (1984) has chronicled the millennia of discourse about other inhabited worlds, based upon deeply held religious or philosophical belief systems. The popularity of the idea of extraterrestrial life has waxed and waned and, at its nadir, put proponents at mortal risk. The several generations of scientists now attending this General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union at the beginning of the 21st century have a marvelous opportunity to shed light on this old question of habitable worlds through observation, experimentation, and interpretation, without recourse to belief systems and without risking their lives (though some may experience rather bumpy career paths). The newly-named and funded, multi-disciplinary field of astrobiology is extremely broad in its scope and is encouraging IAU members to learn and speak the languages of previously disparate disciplines in an attempt to answer the big picture questions: ‘Where did we come from?’, ‘Where are we going?’, and ‘Are we alone?’ These are questions that the general public understand and support, and these are questions that are attracting students of all ages to science and engineering programs. These questions also push the limits of modern instrumentation to explore the cosmos remotely across space and time, as well as to examine samples of interplanetary space returned to the laboratory and samples of distant time teased out of our own Earth.

Within my personal event horizon, the other planetary systems long-predicted by theorists have been uncovered, along with many whose structures were not predicted. The ‘just-so’ conditions requisite for the comfort of astronomers have been understood to be only a very narrow subset of the conditions that nurture extremophilic, microbial life. Thus the potentially habitable real estate beyond Earth has been greatly expanded and within the next few decades it may be possible to detect the biosignatures or technosignatures of inhabitants on distant worlds, should there be any.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2007

References

Backus, P.R. 2006, in preparationGoogle Scholar
Beatty, J. T., Overmann, J., Lince, M. T., Manske, A. K., Lang, A. S., Blankenship, R. E., Van Dover, C. L., Martinson, T. A., & Plumley, F. G. 2005, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 102, 9306Google Scholar
Beaulieu, J.-P., Bennett, D. P., Fouque, P., Williams, A., & Dominik, M. 2005, Nature, 439, 437Google Scholar
Bell Burnell, J. S. 1977, Annals NY Acad. Sci., 302, 685Google Scholar
Breezee, J., Cady, N., & Staley, J.T. 2004, Microb Ecol., 300, 4Google Scholar
Cabrol, N. A., Grin, E. A., Prufert-Bebout, L., Rothschild,, L, & Hock, A. N. 2005, Astrobiology, 5, 305Google Scholar
Cobb, J., Lebofsky, M., Werthimer, D., Bowyer, S., & Lampton, M. 2000, in: Lemarchand, G.A. & Meech, K.J. (eds.), Bioastronomy '99: A New Era in Bioastronomy, ASP-CS, 213, 485Google Scholar
Cocconi, G., & Morrison, P. 1959, Nature, 184, 844CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, R. J., Downs, G., Emmerson, R., Grimm, M., Gulkis, S., Stevens, G., & Tarter, J. C. 1987, MNRAS, 225, 491Google Scholar
Dalton, J. B., Mogul, R., Kagawa, H. K., Chan, S. L., & Jamieson, C. S. 2003, Astrobiology, 3, 505Google Scholar
Darling, D. 2001, Life Everywhere: The Maverick Science of Astrobiology (New York: Basic Books)Google Scholar
DeBoer, D., Welch, W. J., Dreher, J. D., Tarter, J. C., Blitz, L., Davis, M. D., Fleming, M., Bock, D., Bower, G., Lugten, J., Girmay-Keleta, G., D'Addario, L., Harp, G., Ackermann, R., Weinreb, S., Engargiola, G., Thornton, D., & Wadefalk, N. 2004, Proc. SPIE, 5489, 1021Google Scholar
De Duve, C. 1996, Vital Dust: Life As a Cosmic Imperative (New York: Basic Books)Google Scholar
Dick, S. J. 1984, Plurality of Worlds: The Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (Cambridge: CUP)Google Scholar
Drake, F. D. 1960, Sky & Telescope, 39, 140Google Scholar
Fisher, C. R., MacDonald, I. R., Sassen, R., Young, C. M., Macko, S., Hourdez, S., Carney, R., Joy, S., & McMullin, E. 2000, Naturwissenschaften, 87, 184Google Scholar
Gold, T. 1998, The Deep Hot Biosphere (Berlin: Springer)Google Scholar
Gott, J. R. 1993, Nature, 363, 315Google Scholar
Greene, B. 2000, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (Vintage Press)Google Scholar
Harwit, M. 1981, Cosmic Discovery: The Search, Scope, and Heritage of Astronomy (New York: Basic Books)Google Scholar
Harwit, M. 2003, ApJ, 597, 1266Google Scholar
Holder, J., Ashworth, P., LeBohec, S., Rose, H.J., & Weekes, T. C. 2005, Proc. 29th Int. Cosmic Ray Conf., 5, 387Google Scholar
Horowitz, P., Coldwell, C., Howard, A., Latham, D., Stefanik, B., Wolff, J., & Zajac, J. 2006, preprint <http://seti.harvard.edu/oseti/oseti.pdf>>Google Scholar
Howard, A. B., & Horowitz, P. 2001, Proc. SPIE, 4273, 153Google Scholar
Howard, A. W., Horowitz, P., Wilkinson, D. P., Coldwell, C. M., Groth, E. J., Jarosik, N., Latham, D. W., Stefanik, R. P., Willman, A. J. Jr., Wolff, J., & Zajac, J. M. 2004, ApJ, 613, 1270CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kashefi, K., & Lovley, D. R. 2003, Science, 301, 394Google Scholar
Kurzweil, R. 2005, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking Press)Google Scholar
Leger, A., Ollivier, M., Altwegg, K., & Woolf, N. J. 1999, A&A, 341, 304Google Scholar
Lemarchand, G. A. 1994, Ap. Space Sci., 214, 209Google Scholar
Levin, G. V. 1997, SPIE Proc., 3111, 146CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lineweaver, C., Fenner, Y., & Gibson, B. 2004, Science, 303, 59Google Scholar
Lovelock, J. 1965, Nature, 207, 568Google Scholar
Mallove, E. F.MIT Tech Talk, Nov. 7Google Scholar
Mattimore, V., & Battista, J. R. 1996, J. Bacteriology, 178, 633Google Scholar
McKay, D. S., Gibson, E. K. Jr., Thomas-Keprta, K. L., Vali, H., Romanek, C. S., Clemett, S. J., Chillier, S. E. F., Maechling, C. R., & Zare, R. N. 1996, Science, 273, 924Google Scholar
Montanes-Rodriguez, P., Palle, E., Goode, P. R., Hickey, J., & Koonin, S. E. 2005, ApJ, 629, 1175Google Scholar
Mumma, M. J., Novak, R. E., Hewagama, T., Villanueva, G. L., Bonev, B. P., DiSanti, M. A., Smith, M. D., & Dello Russo, N.BAAS, 37, 669Google Scholar
Pelli, D. G., & Chamerlain, S. C. 1989, Nature, 337, 460Google Scholar
Raymond, S. N., Mandell, A. M., & Sigurdsson, S. 2006, Science, 313, 1413Google Scholar
Roadcap, G. S., Sanford, R. A., Qusheng, J., Pardinas, J. R., & Bethke, C. M. 2006, Ground Water, 44, 511Google Scholar
Rothschild, L. J., & Mancinelli, R. L. 2001, Nature, 409, 1092Google Scholar
Rothschild, L. J., Giver, L. J., White, M. R., & Mancinelli, R. L. 1994, J. Phycol., 30, 431Google Scholar
Schulze-Makuch, D., Grinspoon, D. H., Abbas, O., Irwin, L. N., & Bullock, M. A. 2004, Astrobiology, 4, 11Google Scholar
Segura, A., Kasting, J. F., Meadows, V., Cohen, M., Scalo, J., Crisp, D., Butler, R. A. H., & Tinetti, G. 2005, Astrobiology, 5, 706Google Scholar
Shelley, M. 1818, Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus (London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones)Google Scholar
Squyres, S. W., Knoll, A. H., Arvidson, R. E., Clark, B. C., & Grotzinger, J. P. 2006, Science, 313, 1403Google Scholar
Tarter, J. C. 2001, ARAA, 39, 511Google Scholar
Tinetti, G., Meadows, V. S., Crisp, D., Fong, W., Fishbein, E., Turnbull, M., & Bibring, J.-P. 2006, Astrobiology, 6, 34Google Scholar
Townes, C. H., & Schwartz, R. N. 1961, Nature, 192, 348CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turnbull, M. C., & Tarter, J. C. 2003, ApJS, 145, 181Google Scholar
Vidal-Madjar, A., Desert, J.-M., Levavelier des Etangs, A., Hebrard, G., Ballester, G. E., Ehrenreich, D., Ferlet, R., McConnell, J. C., Mayor, M., & Parkinson, D. C. 2004, ApJ (Letters), 604, L69Google Scholar
Ward, P. & Brownlee, D. 2001, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Univere (Berlin: Springer)Google Scholar
Woolf, N. J., Smith, P. S., Traub, A., & Jucks, K. W. 2002, ApJ, 574, 430Google Scholar