Life and the Indefinite Cosmos

Today, United States NASA spacecraft Cassini is exploring Titan and the other moons of Saturn from orbit.  Forty-four years ago, in 1969, American astronaut Neil Armstrong was the first human to walk on a celestial body; the Moon. 

In 1971, the USSR's Mars 3 lander made soft landing on Mars, the first man-made contact on the Red Planet. Since then, a number of man made robotic probes have visited Mars. Today, the US still has a robotic rover still cruising around on the surface of Mars. In 2008, the Indian Space and Research Organization successfully launched a lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan-1, which discovered evidence of water on the moon. Last week they launched  Mangalyaan, which means "Mars craft" in Hindi.  In this launch India will attempt to become only the fourth country or group of countries to reach the Red Planet, after the United States, Soviet Union, and Europe.

We're searching for proof of life in all the right places.

As a human endeavor, regardless of which country initiates the technology, humans have consistently and intrinsically sought that which is greater than themselves.  Prehistoric man migrated from continent to continent searching for contact.  Ancient modern man created gods to explain the existence of that which he could not fully comprehend; the cosmos, the finality of life, even the weather. Today, we are still searching our back yard to the extent that it is possible at our current level of technology, and we still seek contact.  We seek life; we seek ourselves. 

But with all the difficulty involved in reaching the even the nearest planet, Mars, or even in landing on the moon, which is only 221,000 miles away at perigee (I have logged that many miles on my truck), we have only barely scratched the surface, so to speak.  Some reports emphatically claim there are alien artifacts on the moon, found during the Apollo landings, and the same have been found on Mars by our Martian rovers. I don't know this for sure, but neither do I discount the possibility, and here's why:  It is inconceivable that life - even as defined as we know it - is confined exclusively to Earth.  Putting aside the theological considerations, it is simply a statistical impossibility that of forty billion possible Goldilocks zone planets in our Milky Way Galaxy alone, that life hasn't formed - or was created by intelligent will - elsewhere in our neighborhood.  I think life is out there, and we're trying hard to make contact.

Maybe Richard Hoagland is right and we did find it.  He presents some compelling arguments in support, after all.  On the other hand, though, perhaps intelligent extraterrestrial life has already made contact with us.  And maybe we didn't notice. That could be.