Nasa scientists were ecstatic last week because it was established that the planet Mars had liquid water, considered essential for the existence of life.
The super salty brine was seen “running down steep slopes on the surface of the Red Planet,” as Mars is often called. The scientists surmised that the presence of two chemicals, hydrogen and oxygen, could have supported life in Mars in the distant past, or even at present.
Fundamental problem
The fundamental problem with scientific search for life on other planets is the assumption that for life to exist there, it must have the same conditions or
basic elements similar to those of earth. Space scientists could not conceive of life existing without these chemicals. But is this a correct assumption?
Suppose life, as it exists on other planets, especially those outside our solar system and galaxy, can thrive without these essential building blocks, like oxygen and hydrogen. What if life over there can exist with different or unknown building blocks from those needed by life on earth?
The problem is, we are so used to thinking that life as we know it on Earth should be made of the same elements as those on other planets.
Extraterrestrial life may be made of something entirely different from what exists here.
Seti project
That’s why I like that old newspaper cartoon I saw at the beginning of the space exploration into other planets. Two small stones (A and B) were talking to each other when human astronauts arrived on their planet. Stone A said to Stone B: “Shssh! Don’t sneeze, they might know we are here.”
The same basic epistemological problem confronted space scientists in the long-running Seti Project (or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). For decades they were listening to sounds or anything coming from outer space that could indicate intelligent life, such as non-random sounds or mathematical patterns.
Again, there are two assumptions here by these space sleuths that may be questioned. The first is that signs of intelligence must follow deterministic patterns, like mathematical models, such as one plus one equals two. It cannot be three.
The second is that aliens or extraterrestrial creatures must be out there in faraway space or galaxies.
The first theory is questionable because it assumes this is the only model that indicates intelligence as we know it on Earth. Quantum physics has already shown that nothing is certain or fixed. Everything is in a state of flux and consists only of probabilities.
The second theory that aliens must be out there may not be correct. Seti project scientists might be looking in the wrong place. That’s why they found nothing after decades of listening. They never thought of the possibility that the aliens they were looking for may already have been with us on earth for millions of years and may be living among us humans, studying us and intermarrying with us.
Impossible? Crazy idea? That’s what people thought of the Wright brothers who invented the airplane, or Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone, or Thomas Edison who invented the incandescent lamp. Their ideas were considered unscientific, if not insane.
But as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead pointed out, “A really new idea appears foolish when it is first introduced.”
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