Is there Life Out There? How can we know?

Mankind has gazed out into the stars at night to wonder about what’s out there. The fascination of the mankind to their origins and to know if there is life out there amongst the stars has been an obsession for the humankind. For centuries, mankind has gazed at the cosmos to wonder about it. Many writers, scientists, philosophers have pondered about this issue for centuries. Is there Life Out there? How Can We Know?

In the 20th century with the advancement of the Space Age, this quest has become a reality with the start f the Space Age in 1957. Mankind has obsessed himself with finding out the question of is there life out there? Especially NASA has invested millions of dollars for the Search of Life in Outer Space to see if there is the possibility of the existence of Intelligent Life out there. Just for this purpose NASA has initiated the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) program. In this program very big satellite dishes (hundreds of meters in diameter) are used to listen to clutter of the outer space. This method utilizes the power of radio astronomy as these huge dishes listen to see if there is anything in outer space. Especially lower frequency and higher wavelength signals are listened to as these frequencies and wavelength cross the gulf of space to the Planet Earth. It is hoped someday, we can get some sort of signal that there are other life forms in outer space. There are hundreds of professionals out there that listen to what the cosmos has to say. Also another interesting development happened in the year 2007 as two prominent directors from NASA quit because they were afraid that these SETI efforts would backfire and cause belligerent life forms to focus their attention on us. As much as this sounds like a science fiction, it must be seen that the possibility exists and people are thinking about it.

Besides listening for signals from outer space, mankind has launched several probes into the deep reaches of outer space to see if there are any marks of any life forms out there. Probably the most famous part of this task is the Voyager Program of NASA. In the Voyager Program, man kind has used the Voyager Satellite as a Bridge to Extra Terrestrials in case the Voyager probe cam across a alien life form. Just for this purpose, the Da Vinci Pictures of man kind was put in the probe along with the Greetings Message from every language in the Planet Earth. In addition, some simple things like the Metric System, The Periodic Scale, and some simple mathematics was put in the satellite. In case Voyager was intercepted, these would serve as stepping stones to the extraterrestrial life forms out there, to understand us better. In any case since space is vast and infinite it is safe to say that someday we will come across other intelligent life forms besides ourselves and we will find out that mankind is not alone. If you think about the endless amount of space volume that exists in the universe, you can see that there must be other solar systems out there that have similar conditions for supporting life. In fact, some several exciting work by NASA scientists have uncovered some extraordinary planets that can have the capability to support life. Especially with remote sensing equipment like the Deep Space Observation Hubble Telescope, we can see to hundreds of thousands of light years and beyond. Thus, we are finding more and more planets and stars everyday and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that someday we can find M class planets that are similar to our Planet Earth and can support life. Of course, if life is found out there probably it won’t look the same as the gravity and light conditions of the planet would make them look different.