Searching For Life On Other Worlds

One of the most fascinating things a scientist could discover would be life on another world. Sure there are plenty of other things which might excite the scientific community, but knowing for sure that life exists outside of our little blue marble certainly has to be one of the most exciting things that could happen. For most of the time the human race has been on Earth, it has been thought we were the only life in the universe. There was nothing to prove this of course, but it was the belief. Perhaps part of this belief was the fact it was not understood that those points of light in the night sky were other suns and no one dreamed there were other planets until man had been here for many tens of thousands of years. One of the things that amazes me is the capacity some people have to believe whatever they are told even if there is no proof of it. This has caused us much trouble over the lifetime of the human race.

Scientists announced they may have a new way to detect life on alien planets. They are using a new type of mirror. It is not a mirror in the sense we think of mirrors. When we think of a mirror we think of a flat shiny reflective surface which will reflect whatever is in front of it. This is not the type of mirror scientists are using to look for life, they are using a mirror which is nonmetallic and reflects infrared light. Using nanoscale antennas, they are now able to capture electromagnetic radiation in new ways which can be used by a new class of devices including sensors and other optoelectronic devices. One scientist said, “We have achieved a new milestone in magnetic mirror technology by experimentally demonstrating this remarkable behavior of light at infrared wavelengths. There are no materials in nature which magnetically reflect light, so scientists had to develop new ones. Our breakthrough comes from using a specially engineered, non-metallic surface studded with nanoscale resonators." So what does all this have to do with detecting life on other planets? It turns out that the electromagnetic mirror retains the original light signature and does not reverse it on reflection like an ordinary mirror. We should be able to see what colors are dominant. If we look at earth for example we see a lot of green indicating plants. If we see a lot of green light coming from alien worlds we can assume the alien planets have plant life.

Scientists claim another indication of life is methane gas. When scientists examined Mars a few years ago they made a statement that methane gas was found around caves on the planet’s surface, but like so much else about Mars not much more was heard about it. The scientists had said at the time this could mean there was some sort of animal life living in the caves. There was also a statement by one scientist many years ago who said he believed there was an atmosphere on Mars, but that it only was about a couple of feet from the surface. Could this mean that animal life, which was low to the ground could exist? If it did could it be some sort of lizard type beast or tiny rodents which scurry around the surface? There was one photo taken by one of the rovers which seemed to show a mouse or rat on the surface, but the usual disclaimers by NASA followed almost immediately. We heard things like it was a rock which just happened to look like a rodent. One thing about NASA, they always take the non-life excuse track.

One astronomer said if we want to find life on other planets, we should look for the colorful ones. She was taking about worlds full of bacteria. An example of this on earth is the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park. It is full of all sorts of stunning coloration, because the bacteria which live in it are very colorful. The bacteria themselves prefer different temperatures depending on what kind of bacteria they are, so it is possible if we find a planet which is a certain color it could be because it is covered with bacteria of a certain type. Right now we are assuming something to be true and that is the same type of bacteria could live on other planets. It could be true, but it could also be wrong. Until we get around more in space and check this out, we just can’t know if this is true or not. It does make me wonder about something though, how would you like to be the astronaut who walks on a planet which is full of bacteria? I would say this sounds disgusting and dangerous, but we do it every day on Earth.

We know scientists are looking for intelligent alien life using radio waves. The SETI Institute is scanning millions of channels in the hopes of finding intelligent life. The problem I find with this is they might as well be looking for smoke signals. We have only been using radio signals for a little over a 100 years and will probably find something better and faster within the next hundred years. We already know we can instantly change the properties of an atom at any distance and this might be the very way we will communicate in the future. The universe is far too vast to use radio waves which only travel at the speed of light. The average time it takes a radio signal to reach Mars is 13 minutes 48 seconds. It takes years to reach the closest star. You can see how impractical it is to use radio waves to communicate in our universe, because of this I am almost willing to bet a civilization only uses radio waves for about 200 years or less unless it finds a better alternative sooner. This would eliminate all those intelligent races which haven’t reached that stage yet and those which have advanced past it, not leaving many races in our vicinity if other races exist.

Another way scientists are looking for alien life is by examining the atmospheres around alien planets. This is hard to do due to the great distances, but more powerful telescopes are being built every year and we are to the point where the giant telescope at Mt. Palomar which is 200 inches across its large mirror is being dwarfed by the new telescopes one of which is going to have mirrors 12 times the size of the Palomar mirror. Yes most astronomical telescopes work by using a mirror to reflect light onto a smaller mirror which angles the light up into an eyepiece where mostly cameras are placed today. These cameras also allow the view to be seen on a monitor or series of monitors. These grand telescopes may someday be replaced by electronic devices which will be far more compact and more efficient at gathering light, but the time has not come yet. The more carbon dioxide found in alien atmospheres the better the scientists feel the chances of finding life are, because this might mean there are machines spewing it out.

The search for alien life seem to be accelerating, because it is widely accepted that with so many alien planets being discovered the chances of finding life are on the increase.