The Search For Alien Life

COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
THE SEARCH FOR ALIEN LIFE ScientificAmerican.com

special online issue no. 4
Are we alone in the universe? It’s a question that every school kid has probably asked at some time—and scientists in particular want an answer.
In their quest after alien beings, astronomers have scanned the heavens for radio signals from another technologically advanced civilization;
they’ve sent probes to all but one of the planets around our Sun; they’ve studied extreme life forms on Earth to better understand the conditions
under which life can take root; and they’ve scrutinized the neighborhoods around distant stars.
We may never discover whether or not extraterrestrials exist—at least not until they contact us. But researchers continue to refine their search.
Discoveries that water likely flowed on Mars at one time and that Jupiter’s moon Europa may house a subterranean sea have intensified the hunt
for alien organisms in our own solar system. And the identification of approximately 100 extrasolar planets in recent years has raised hopes of
finding inhabited worlds similar to Earth elsewhere in our galaxy.
In this special online issue, Scientific American authors review the evidence for and against the existence of ETs. In Where Are They?, Ian Crawford
ponders what it means that all of our surveys so far have come up empty handed. In Is There Life Elsewhere in the Universe?, Jill C. Tarter, direc-
tor of research for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, and her colleague Christopher F. Chyba assert that the search has
only just begun. Other articles examine the cases to be made for relic life on Mars and other bodies in our solar system, as well as the plans to
launch a new space telescope for spying on distant worlds. Buy the issue, read the articles and, the next time you gaze up at the night sky, make
up your own mind.—the Editors
TABLE OF CONTENTS
2 Where Are They?
BY IAN CRAWFORD, SIDEBAR BY ANDREW J. LEPAGE; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, JULY 2000
Maybe we are alone in the galaxy after all
8 Is There Life Elsewhere in the Universe?

BY JILL C. TARTER AND CHRISTOPHER F. CHYBA; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, DECEMBER 1999
The answer is: nobody knows. Scientists' search for life beyond Earth has been less thorough than commonly thought.
But that is about to change
14 An Ear to the Stars

BY NAOMI LUBICK; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, NOVEMBER 2002
Despite long odds, astronomer Jill C. Tarter forges ahead to improve the chances of picking up signs
of extraterrestrial intelligence
16 Searching for Life in Our Solar System

BY BRUCE M. JAKOSKY; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, MAGNIFICENT COSMOS-SPRING 1998
If life evolved independently on our neighboring planets or moons, then where are the most likely places to look
for evidence of extraterrestrial organisms?
21 Searching for Life on Other Planets

BY J. ROGER P. ANGEL AND NEVILLE J. WOOLF; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, APRIL 1996
Life remains a phenomenon we know only on Earth. But an innovative telescope in space could change that by
detecting signs of life on distant planets
28 The Case for Relic Life on Mars

BY EVERETT K. GIBSON JR., DAVID S. MCKAY, KATHIE THOMAS-KEPRTA AND CHRISTOPHER S. ROMANEK;
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, DECEMBER 1997
A meteorite found in Antarctica offers strong evidence that Mars has had—and may still have—microbial life
1 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE NOVEMBER 2002

SE AR CHING FOR EX TRATERRESTRIALS
originally published July 2000
H
ow common are other civilizations in the uni- in 1993 by J. William Schopf of the University of California at
verse? This question has fascinated humanity Los Angeles. These organisms were already quite advanced
for centuries, and although we still have no de- and must themselves have had a long evolutionary history.
finitive answer, a number of recent develop- Thus, the actual origin of life, assuming it to be indigenous to
ments have brought it once again to the fore. Earth, must have occurred closer to four billion years ago.
Chief among these is the confirmation, after a Earth itself is only 4.6 billion years old, and the fact that life
long wait and several false starts, that planets exist outside appeared so quickly in geologic time— probably as soon as
our solar system. conditions had stabilized sufficiently to make it possible— sug-
Over the past five years more than three dozen stars like the gests that this step was relatively easy for nature to achieve.
sun have been found to have Jupiter-mass planets. And even Nobel prize–winning biochemist Christian de Duve has gone
though astronomers have found no Earth-like planets so far, so far as to conclude, “Life is almost bound to arise . . . wher-
we can now be fairly confident that they also will be plentiful. ever physical conditions are similar to those that prevailed on
To the extent that planets are necessary for the origin and evo- our planet some four billion years ago.” So there is every rea-
lution of life, these exciting discoveries certainly augur well for son to believe that the galaxy is teeming with living things.
the widely held view that life pervades the universe. This view Does it follow that technological civilizations are abundant
is supported by advances in our understanding of the history as well? Many people have argued that once primitive life has
of life on Earth, which have highlighted the speed with which evolved, natural selection will inevitably cause it to advance
life became established on this planet. The oldest direct evi- toward intelligence and technology. But is this necessarily so?
dence we have for life on Earth consists of fossilized bacteria in That there might be something wrong with this argument
3.5- billion-year-old rocks from Western Australia, announced was famously articulated by nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi in

Where
Are
They?
Maybe we are alone in the galaxy after all
by Ian Crawford
1950. If extraterrestrials are commonplace, he asked, where ZIP, ZILCH, NADA has come out of any aliens with whom we
are they? Should their presence not be obvious? This ques- share the galaxy. Searches for extraterrestrial intelligence have at
tion has become known as the Fermi Paradox. least partially scanned for Earth-level radio transmitters out to
This problem really has two aspects: the failure of search 4,000 light-years away from our planet (yellow circle) and for so-
for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) programs to detect ra- called type I advanced civilizations out to 40,000 light-years (red
circle). The lack of signals is starting to worry many scientists.
dio transmissions from other civilizations, and the lack of evi-
dence that extraterrestrials have ever visited Earth. The possi-
bility of searching for ETs by radio astronomy was first seri- by Guillermo A. Lemarchand; Scientific American Pre-
ously discussed by physicists Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip sents: Exploring Intelligence, Winter 1998]. In spite of all
Morrison in a famous paper published in the journal Nature this activity, however, researchers have made no positive de-
in 1959. This was followed the next year by the first actual tections of extraterrestrial signals.
search, Project Ozma, in which Frank D. Drake and his col- Of course, we are still in the early days of SETI, and the lack
DON DIXON; CALCULATIONS BY ANDREW J. LEPAGE
leagues at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in of success to date cannot be used to infer that ET civilizations
Green Bank, W.Va., listened for signals from two nearby stars. do not exist. The searches have so far covered only a small frac-
Since then, many other SETI experiments have been per- tion of the total “parameter space”— that is, the combination
formed, and a number of sophisticated searches, both all-sky of target stars, radio frequencies, power levels and temporal
surveys and targeted searches of hundreds of individual stars, coverage that observers must scan before drawing a definitive
are currently in progress [see “The Search for Extraterrestrial conclusion. Nevertheless, initial results are already beginning
Intelligence,” by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake; Scientific to place some interesting limits on the prevalence of radio-
American, May 1975; “Is There Intelligent Life Out There?” transmitting civilizations in the galaxy [see box on next page].
The Search for Alien Life SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE 3
The Fermi Paradox becomes evident contains roughly a million solar-type trophes and to remain detectable with
when one examines some of the as- stars. If so, something like 1,000 civi- our instruments— that raises other prob-
sumptions underlying SETI, especially lizations should inhabit the galaxy as a lems, as discussed below.) Statistically,
the total number of galactic civiliza- whole. the number of civilizations present at
tions, both extant and extinct, that it This is rather a large number, and un- any one time is equal to their rate of
implicitly assumes. One of the current less these civilizations are very long- formation multiplied by their mean life-
leaders of the field, Paul Horowitz of lived, it implies that a truly enormous time. One can approximate the forma-
Harvard University, has stated that he number must have risen and fallen over tion rate as the total number that have
expects at least one radio-transmitting the course of galactic history. (If they ever appeared divided by the age of the
civilization to reside within 1,000 light- are indeed long-lived— if they manage galaxy, roughly 12 billion years. If civi-
years of the sun, a volume of space that to avoid natural or self-induced catas- lizations form at a constant rate and
Where They Could Hide

The galaxy appears to be devoid of supercivilizations, but lesser
cultures could have eluded the ongoing searches
by Andrew J. LePage
o SETI program has ever found a radio telescope in Puerto Rico, which could any signals out of the detection band.
N verifiable alien radio signal. What

does that null result mean? Any
answer must be highly qualified,
because the searches have been so incom-
plete. Nevertheless, researchers can draw
be used as a narrowly beamed radar system
with an EIRP of nearly 1014 watts.
The EIRP can serve as a crude proxy for
the technological level of an advanced civi-
lization, according to a scheme devised by
These are not trivial results. Before scien-
tists began to look, they thought that type II
or III civilizations might actually be quite
common. That does not appear to be the
case. This conclusion agrees with other as-
some preliminary conclusions about the Russian SETI pioneer Nikolai S. Kardashev in tronomical data. Unless supercivilizations
number and technological sophistication of the early 1960s and later extended by Carl have miraculously repealed the second law
other civilizations. Sagan. Type I civilizations could transmit sig- of thermodynamics, they would need to
The most thoroughly examined frequency nals with a power equivalent to all the sun- dump their waste heat, which would show
channel to date, around 1.42 gigahertz, cor- light striking an Earth-like planet, about 1016 up at infrared wavelengths. Yet searches
responds to the emission line of the most watts. Type II civilizations could harness the performed by Jun Jugaku of the Research
common element in the universe, hydro- entire power output of a sunlike star, about Institute of Civilization in Japan and his col-
gen—on the premise that if extraterrestrials 1027 watts. Still mightier type III civilizations leagues have seen no such offal out to a dis-
had to pick some frequency to attract our at- command an entire galaxy, about 1038 tance of about 80 light-years. Assuming that
tention, this would be a natural choice. The di- watts. If the capability of a civilization falls in civilizations are scattered randomly, these
agram on the opposite page, the first of its between these values, its type is interpolat- findings also put limits on the average spac-
kind, shows exactly how thoroughly the uni- ed logarithmically. For example, based on ing of civilizations and thus on their inferred
verse has been searched for signals at or the Arecibo output, humanity rates as a type prevalence in unprobed areas of the galaxy.
near this frequency. No signal has ever been 0.7 civilization. On the other hand, millions of undetected
detected, which means that any civilizations For any combination of distance and civilizations only slightly more advanced
either are out of range or do not transmit transmitter power, the diagram indicates than our own could fill the Milky Way. A hun-
with enough power to register on our instru- what fraction of stars has been scanned so dred or more type I civilizations could also
ments. The null results therefore rule out far without success. The white and colored share the galaxy with us. To complicate mat-
certain types of civilizations, including prim- areas represent the civilizations whose exis- ters further, extraterrestrials might be using
itive ones close to Earth and advanced ones tence we therefore can rule out with varying another frequency or transmitting sporadi-
farther away. degrees of confidence. The black area repre- cally. Indeed, SETI programs have logged nu-
The chart quantifies this conclusion. The sents civilizations that could have evaded merous “extrastatistical events,” signals too
horizontal axis shows the distance from the searches. The size of the black area in- strong to be noise but never reobserved.
Earth. The vertical axis gives the effective creases toward the right—that is, going far- Such transmissions might have been way-
isotropic radiated power (EIRP) of the trans- ther away from Earth. ward radio waves from nearby cell phones—
mitters. The EIRP is essentially the transmit- SETI programs completely exclude Areci- or they might have been intermittent extrater-
ter power divided by the fraction of the sky bo-level radio transmissions out to 50 or so restrial broadcasts.
the antenna covers. In the case of an omni- light-years. Farther away, they can rule out No one yet knows. Although the cutting
directional transmitter, the EIRP is equal to the most powerful transmitters. Far beyond edge of technology has made SETI ever
the transmitter power itself. The most pow- the Milky Way, SETI fails altogether, because more powerful, we have explored only a
erful on this planet is currently the Arecibo the relative motions of galaxies would shift mere fraction of the possibilities.

live an average of 1,000 years each, a single one, have left any evidence of J. Tipler and radio astronomer Ronald
total of 12 billion or so technological their existence? N. Bracewell. All have taken as their
civilizations must have existed over the starting point the lack of clear evidence
history of the galaxy for 1,000 to be ex- Extraterrestrial Migration for extraterrestrial visits to Earth. What-
tant today. Different assumptions for ever one thinks about UFOs, we can be
the formation rate and average lifetime
yield different estimates of the number
of civilizations, but all are very large
T his problem was first discussed in
detail by astronomer Michael H.
Hart and engineer David Viewing in
sure that Earth has not been taken over
by an extraterrestrial civilization, as this
would have put an end to our own evo-
numbers. This is what makes the Fermi independent papers, both published in lution and we would not be here today.
Paradox so poignant. Would none of 1975. It was later extended by various re- There are only four conceivable ways
these billions of civilizations, not even a searchers, most notably physicist Frank of reconciling the absence of ETs with
the widely held view that advanced civ-
ilizations are common. Perhaps inter-
stellar spaceflight is infeasible, in which
case ETs could never have come here
Extent of Extent of local even if they had wanted to. Perhaps ET
Milky Way galaxy group of galaxies
civilizations are indeed actively explor-
1030 ing the galaxy but have not reached us
yet. Perhaps interstellar travel is feasi-
Type II
civilization ble, but ETs choose not to undertake it.
1025
Or perhaps ETs have been, or still are,
Effective Isotropic Radiated Power
THOROUGHLY
active in Earth’s vicinity but have decid-
SEARCHED
ed not to interfere with us. If we can
eliminate each of these explanations of
1020 the Fermi Paradox, we will have to face
the possibility that we are the most ad-
Type I vanced life-forms in the galaxy.
civilization The first explanation clearly fails. No
1015
Earth-level known principle of physics or engineer-
civilization ing rules out interstellar spaceflight.
NOT YET SEARCHED (Arecibo) Even in these early days of the space age,
10
10 engineers have envisaged propulsion
Earth-level strategies that might reach 10 to 20 per-
civilization
(radio leakage) cent of the speed of light, thereby per-
101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 mitting travel to nearby stars in a mat-
Distance from Earth (light-years) ter of decades [see “Reaching for the
Stars,” by Stephanie D. Leifer; Scien-
tific American, February 1999].
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 For the same reason, the second expla-
Percentage of Star Systems Searched nation is problematic as well. Any civi-
lization with advanced rocket technolo-
gy would be able to colonize the entire
galaxy on a cosmically short timescale.
RESULTS OF SETI PROGRAMS are summarized in this diagram. The black
area shows which civilizations could have eluded our radio searches, either be-
For example, consider a civilization that
cause they are too far away or because their transmitters are too weak. To make sends colonists to a few of the planetary
sense of this diagram, choose a transmitter strength (vertical axis), read across systems closest to it. After those colonies
to the edge of the black area and go down to find the distance from Earth (hor- have established themselves, they send
izontal axis). For example, an Arecibo-class transmitter of 1014 watts must be out secondary colonies of their own, and
farther away than about 4,000 light-years to have eluded the searches altogether. so on. The number of colonies grows ex-
The color code provides more detailed information—namely, the estimated per- ponentially. A colonization wave front
centage of all star systems that have been examined for transmitters of a given will move outward with a speed deter-
power or greater. mined by the speed of the starships and
by the time required by each colony to
establish itself. New settlements will
quickly fill in the volume of space be-
ANDREW J. LEPAGE is a physicist at Visidyne, Inc., in Burlington, Mass., where he ana- hind this wave front [see illustration on
lyzes satellite remote-sensing data. He has written some three dozen articles on SETI and next page].
exobiology. Assuming a typical colony spacing of
10 light-years, a ship speed of 10 percent
that of light, and a period of 400 years
ANDREW J. LEPAGE
between the foundation of a colony and

its sending out colonies of its own, the
colonization wave front will expand at
The Search for Alien Life COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE 5
COLONIZATION OF THE GALAXY
STEP 1: 500 Years STEP 4: 2,000 Years is not as time-consuming as one might
think. Humans could begin the process
by sending colonists to two nearby stars,
HOME PLANET a trip that might take 100 years with
foreseeable technology. After 400 years to
dig in, each colony sends out two of its
own, and so on. Within 10,000 years our
descendants could inhabit every star sys-
tem within 200 light-years. Settling the
entire galaxy would take 3.75 million
years—a split second in cosmic terms. If
STEP 7: 3,500 Years STEP 10: 5,000 Years even one alien civilization has ever under-
taken such a program, its colonies should
be everywhere we look.
ciple, this could have happened billions

of years ago, when Earth was inhabited
solely by microorganisms and was wide
open to interference from outside. Yet
no physical artifact, no chemical traces,
no obvious biological influence indicates
that it has ever been intruded upon.
STEP 7,500: 3.75 Million Years (Galaxy Completely Colonized) Even if Earth was deliberately seeded
with life, as some scientists have specu-
lated, it has been left alone since then.
It follows that any attempt to resolve
the Fermi Paradox must rely on as-
sumptions about the behavior of other
civilizations. For example, they might de-
stroy themselves first, they might have no
interest in colonizing the galaxy, or they
might have strong ethical codes against
interfering with primitive life-forms.
Many SETI researchers, as well as oth-
ers who are convinced that ET civiliza-
tions must be common, tend to dismiss
the implications of the Fermi Paradox
HOME PLANET by an uncritical appeal to one or more
of these sociological considerations.
Colonization Timeline (millions of years) But they face a fundamental problem.
These attempted explanations are plau-
0 1 2 3 3.75
sible only if the number of extraterres-
trial civilizations is small. If the galaxy
has contained millions or billions of
Cosmic Timeline (millions of years)
technological civilizations, it seems very
0 2,500 5,000 7,500 10,000 12,500 unlikely that they would all destroy
themselves, be content with a sedentary
OLDEST STAR FORMATION TODAY existence, or agree on the same set of
IN THE GALAXY OF EARTH ethical rules for the treatment of less de-
OLDEST KNOWN EVOLUTION OF
FOSSILS HUMANS veloped forms of life. It would take only
one technological civilization to em-
bark, for whatever reason, on a pro-
an average speed of 0.02 light-year a spawn new settlements. A reasonable gram of galactic colonization. Indeed,
year. As the galaxy is 100,000 light-years upper limit might be 5,000 years, the the only technological civilization we
across, it takes no more than about five time it has taken human civilization to actually know anything about— namely,
BRYAN CHRISTIE; CALCULATIONS BY GEORGE MUSSER
million years to colonize it completely. develop from the earliest cities to space- our own— has yet to self-destruct,
Though a long time in human terms, this flight. In that case, full galactic coloniza- shows every sign of being expansionist,
is only 0.05 percent of the age of the tion would take about 50 million years. and is not especially reticent about in-
galaxy. Compared with the other rele- The implication is clear: the first tech- terfering with other living things.
vant astronomical and biological time- nological civilization with the ability and Despite the vastness of the endeavor, I
scales, it is essentially instantaneous. the inclination to colonize the galaxy think we can identify a number of rea-
The greatest uncertainty is the time re- could have done so before any competi- sons why a program of interstellar colo-
quired for a colony to establish itself and tors even had a chance to evolve. In prin- nization is actually quite likely. For one,

a species with a propensity to colonize Consider the nearby sunlike star 47 Ur- currence in the galaxy.” Of course, all
would enjoy evolutionary advantages sae Majoris, one of the stars around these arguments, though in my view per-
on its home planet, and it is not difficult which a Jupiter-mass planet has recently suasive, may turn out to be wide of the
to imagine this biological inheritance been discovered. This star has the same mark. In 1853 William Whewell, a
being carried over into a space-age cul- element abundances as the sun, but its prominent protagonist in the extrater-
ture. Moreover, colonization might be estimated age is seven billion years. Any restrial-life debate, observed, “The dis-
undertaken for political, religious or sci- life that may have arisen in its planetary cussions in which we are engaged be-
entific reasons. The last seems especially system should have had a 2.5-billion- long to the very boundary regions of sci-
probable if we consider that the first civ- year head start on us. Many millions of ence, to the frontier where knowledge
ilization to evolve would, by definition, similarly old and chemically rich stars . . . ends and ignorance begins.” In spite
be alone in the galaxy. All its SETI populate the galaxy, especially toward of all the advances since Whewell’s day,
searches would prove negative, and it the center. Thus, the chemical evolution we are in basically the same position to-
might initiate a program of systematic of the galaxy is almost certainly not able day. And the only way to lessen our ig-
interstellar exploration to find out why. to fully account for the Fermi Paradox. norance is to explore our cosmic sur-
To my mind, the history of life on roundings in greater detail.
Resolving the Paradox? Earth suggests a more convincing expla- That means we should continue the
nation. Living things have existed here SETI programs until either we detect
F urthermore, no matter how peace-

able, sedentary or uninquisitive most
ET civilizations may be, ultimately they
almost from the beginning, but multicel-
lular animal life did not appear until
about 700 million years ago. For more
signals or, more likely in my view, we can
place tight limits on the number of radio-
transmitting civilizations that may have
will all have a motive for interstellar than three billion years, Earth was in- escaped our attention. We should pur-
migration, because no star lasts forever. habited solely by single-celled microor- sue a rigorous program of Mars explo-
Over the history of the galaxy, hun- ganisms. This time lag seems to imply ration with the aim of determining
dreds of millions of solar-type stars that the evolution of anything more com- whether or not life ever evolved on that
have run out of hydrogen fuel and end- plicated than a single cell is unlikely. planet and, if not, why not. We should
ed their days as red giants and white Thus, the transition to multicelled ani- press ahead with the development of
dwarfs. If civilizations were common mals might occur on only a tiny fraction large space-based instruments capable
around such stars, where have they of the millions of planets that are inhab- of detecting Earth-size planets around
gone? Did they all just allow themselves ited by single-celled organisms. nearby stars and making spectroscopic
to become extinct? It could be argued that the long soli- searches for signs of life in their atmo-
The apparent rarity of technological tude of the bacteria was simply a neces- spheres. And eventually we should de-
civilizations begs for an explanation. One sary precursor to the eventual appear- velop technologies for interstellar space
possibility arises from considering the ance of animal life on Earth. Perhaps it probes to study the planets around near-
chemical enrichment of the galaxy. All took this long— and will take a compa- by stars.
life on Earth, and indeed any conceiv- rable length of time on other inhabited Only by undertaking such an ener-
able extraterrestrial biochemistry, de- planets— for bacterial photosynthesis to getic program of exploration will we
pends on elements heavier than hydro- produce the quantities of atmospheric reach a fuller understanding of our
gen and helium— principally, carbon, ni- oxygen required by more complex forms place in the cosmic scheme of things. If
trogen and oxygen. These elements, of life. But even if multicelled life-forms we find no evidence for other technolog-
produced by nuclear reactions in stars, do eventually arise on all life-bearing ical civilizations, it may become our des-
have gradually accumulated in the inter- planets, it still does not follow that these tiny to embark on the exploration and
stellar medium from which new stars will inevitably lead to intelligent crea- colonization of the galaxy. SA
and planets form. In the past the concen- tures, still less to technological civiliza-
trations of these elements were lower— tions. As pointed out by Stephen Jay
The Author
possibly too low to permit life to arise. Gould in his book Wonderful Life, the
Among stars in our part of the galaxy, evolution of intelligent life depends on a IAN CRAWFORD is an astronomer in
the sun has a relatively high abundance host of essentially random environmen- the department of physics and astronomy
of these elements for its age. Perhaps our tal influences. at University College London. His research
solar system had a fortuitous head start This contingency is illustrated most interests mostly concern the study of in-
terstellar and circumstellar environments,
in the origins and evolution of life. clearly by the fate of the dinosaurs. They including circumstellar disks thought to
But this argument is not as compelling dominated this planet for 140 million be forming planets. He believes that the
as it may at first appear. For one, re- years yet never developed a technologi- cosmic perspective provided by the ex-
searchers do not know the critical thresh- cal civilization. Without their extinction, ploration of the universe argues for the
old of heavy-element abundances that the result of a chance event, evolutionary political unification of our world. He ex-
life requires. If abundances as low as a history would have been very different. plains: “This perspective is already ap-
parent in images of Earth taken from
tenth of the solar value suffice, as seems The evolution of intelligent life on Earth
space, which emphasize the cosmic in-
plausible, then life could have arisen has rested on a large number of chance significance of our entire planet, never
around much older stars. And although events, at least some of which had a very mind the national boundaries we have
the sun does have a relatively high low probability. In 1983 physicist Bran- drawn upon its surface. And if we do
abundance of heavy elements for its age, don Carter concluded that “civilizations ever meet other intelligent species out
it is certainly not unique [see “Here comparable with our own are likely to there among the stars, would it not be
Come the Suns,” by George Musser; be exceedingly rare, even if locations as best for humanity to speak with a united
voice?”
Scientific American, May 1999]. favorable as our own are of common oc-
originally published December 1999
Is There Life Elsewhere

in the Universe?
The answer is: nobody knows.
Scientists’ search for life beyond Earth has been less
thorough than commonly thought.
But that is about to change
by Jill C. Tarter and Christopher F. Chyba
One of the ongoing searches for

alien radio signals, SETI@home,
scans a stripe across the sky. Be-
cause the Arecibo Observatory in
Puerto Rico has only a limited ability
to steer, the stripe extends from the
celestial equator up to a declination
(celestial latitude) of 35 degrees—
which fortuitously includes many of
the recently discovered planetary
systems. To observe year-round
and avoid interfering with other
astronomical observations,
SETI@home simply tags along
wherever the telescope happens to
be pointing. Over time, it sweeps
across the band.
CELESTIAL LATITUDE

For 40 years, scientists have conducted searches for radio signals from an extraterrestrial technology, sent
spacecraft to all but one of the planets in our solar system, and greatly expanded our knowledge of the
conditions in which living things can survive. The public perception is that we have looked extensively for
signs of life elsewhere. But in reality, we have hardly begun our search.
Assuming our current, comparatively robust space program continues, by 2050 we may finally know
whether there is, or ever was, life elsewhere in our solar system. At a minimum we will have thoroughly
explored the most likely candidates, something we cannot claim today. We will have discovered whether life
dwells on Jupiter’s moon Europa or on Mars. And we will have undertaken the systematic exobiological
exploration of planetary systems around other stars, looking for traces of life in the spectra of planetary
atmospheres. These surveys will be complimented by expanded searches for intelligent signals.
We may find that life is common but technical intelligence is extremely rare or that both are
common or rare.
SETI@HOME, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
CELESTIAL LONGITUDE COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

For now, we just don’t know. The Milky Way proach must give way to less precise but opera-
galaxy is vast, and we have barely stirred its depths. tionally more useful definitions. Consider the biolo-
Indeed, we have so poorly explored our own solar gy experiments that the twin Viking spacecraft car-
system that we cannot even rule out exotic possibili- ried to Mars in 1976. Researchers implicitly adopt-
ties such as the existence of a small robotic craft sent ed a metabolic definition: they hoped to recognize
here long ago to await our emergence as a techno- Martian life through its consumption of chemicals.
logical species. Over the next 50 One of the tests they conducted, the labeled-release
years, our searches for extrater- experiment (which checked whether a soil sample
Radio-frequency restrial intelligence will perhaps fed with nutrients gave off gaseous carbon), did in
meet with success. Or the situa- fact suggest the presence of organisms. In the words
interference might tion may remain the same as it of Viking biology team leader Chuck Klein, its find-
force us to take our was in 1959, when astrophysi- ings “would almost certainly have been interpreted
cists Giuseppe Cocconi and as presumptive evidence for biology” were it not for
search to the far side of Philip Morrison concluded, contradictory data from other experiments.
the moon, maybe to the “The probability of success is
difficult to estimate, but if we Lessons from Viking
Saha crater. never search, the chance of
SETH SHOSTAK SETI Institute
(Arecibo Observatory)
success is zero.”
A search for life elsewhere
must by guided by a practical definition of life.
F oremost among these other experiments was
the Viking gas chromatograph and mass spec-
trometer, which searched for organic molecules.
Many researchers studying the origins of life have None were found; consequently, scientists ex-
adopted a “Darwinian” definition, which holds plained the labeled-release results as unanticipated
that life is a self-sustained chemical system capable chemistry rather than biology [see “The Search for
of undergoing Darwinian evolution by natural se- Life on Mars,” by Norman H. Horowitz; Scien-
lection. By this definition, we will have made living tific American, November 1977]. In effect, they
systems of molecules in the laboratory well before adopted a biochemical definition for life: Martian
2050. The extent to which these systems will in- life, like that on Earth, would be based on organic
form us about the early history of life here or else- carbon.
where is unclear, but at least they will give us some The Viking experience holds important lessons.
examples of the diversity of plausible biological First, although we should search for life from the
styles. perspective of multiple definitions, the biochemical
Unfortunately, the Darwinian definition is not definition seems likely to trump others whenever
terribly useful from the point of view of spacecraft the sensing is done remotely; in the absence of or-
exploration. How long should one wait to see ganic molecules, biologically suggestive results will
whether a chemical system is capable of undergoing probably be distrusted. Second, researchers must
evolution? As a practical matter, the Darwinian ap- establish the chemical and geological context in
Large arrays of small

dishes will conduct the next
generation of searches for
extraterrestrial intelligence.
The plans call for hundreds
or even thousands of
satellite-television antennas,
which collectively offer
higher sensitivity, broader
frequency coverage and
better resilience to
interference. The first such
instrument, the 1hT (which
will have a total collecting
area of one hectare, or 2.5
acres), is projected to cost
$25 million.
SETH SHOSTAK SETI Institute

order to interpret putative biological findings. Fi-
nally, life detection experiments should be de-
signed to provide valuable information even in the
case of a negative result. All these conclusions are
being incorporated into thinking about future mis-
sions, such as the experiments to be flown on the
first Europa lander.
In addition to a biochemical instrument, a valu-
able life detection experiment might involve a mi-
croscope. The advantage of a microscope is that it
makes so few assumptions about what might be
found. But the recent controversy over Allan Hills
84001, the Martian meteorite in which some re-
searchers have claimed to see microfossils, reminds
us that the shape of microscopic features is unlikely
to provide unambiguous evidence for life. There are
just too many nonbiological ways of producing
structures that appear biological in origin.
Europa may be the most promising site for life
elsewhere in the solar system. Growing evidence
indicates that it harbors the solar system’s second
extant ocean—a body of water that has probably
lasted for four billion years underneath a surface
layer of ice. The exploration of Europa will begin
with a mission, scheduled for launch in 2003, de-
signed to prove whether or not the ocean is really
there [see “The Hidden Ocean of Europa,” by
Robert T. Pappalardo, James W. Head and Ronald
Greeley; Scientific American, October]. A posi-
tive answer will inspire a program of detailed ex-
ploration—including landers and perhaps, ulti-
mately, ice-penetrating submarines—that will SETI INSTITUTE
check whether the ocean is home to life. Whatever
the outcome, we will certainly learn a great deal load available on launches of the European Space An extraterrestrial
more about the limits of life’s adaptability and the Agency’s Ariane 5 rocket. By 2010 we expect to signal shows up as a
conditions under which it can arise. On Earth, have established a Mars global positioning system slightly tilted streak on a
wherever there is liquid water, there is life, even in and computer network. Computer users on Earth plot such as this one. Each
unexpected places, such as deep within the crust. will be able to enjoy continuous live video returned dot denotes the detection
Another Jovian satellite, Callisto, also shows from robot rovers exploring Mars on the ground of radio energy at a given
signs of a sea. In fact, subsurface oceans might be and in the air. In a virtual sense, hundreds of mil- frequency (horizontal
standard features of large icy satellites in the outer lions of people will visit Mars regularly, and it will axis) and time (vertical
solar system. Saturn’s moon Titan could be anoth- come to seem a familiar place. As the Internet be- axis). Scattered dots are
er example. Because Titan is covered with a kind of comes interplanetary, we will inevitably come to noise; a line represents a
atmospheric organic smog layer, we have not yet think of ourselves as a civilization that spans the so- regular signal. For an
seen its surface in any detail [see “Titan,” by To- lar system. extraterrestrial signal, the
bias Owen; Scientific American, February Within a decade, we will begin returning sam- line is slanted, because
1982]. In 2004 the Huygens probe will drop into ples from Mars to Earth. But the best places to Earth’s rotation shifts the
its atmosphere, floating down for two hours and look for extant life—Martian hot springs (if they frequency. In this case, the
sending back images. Some models suggest that exist) and deep niches containing liquid water— transmission (arrow)
there may be liquid hydrocarbons flowing on Ti- may well be the most demanding for robot explor- comes from a spaceship—
tan’s surface. If these organics mix with subsurface ers. In the end, we will probably need to send hu- one of ours, Pioneer 10,
liquid water, what might be possible? man explorers. Despite the difficulties, we foresee which is now 73 times as
the first permanent human outposts on Mars, with far from the sun as Earth is.
Inter(pla)net regularly rotating crews, by 2050. Humans will
work closely with robots to explore in detail those
B y 2050 we will have scoured the surface and

some of the subsurface of Mars. Already the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration is
sites identified as the most likely venues for life or
its fossil remains.
If researchers discover life on Mars, one of the
launching two spacecraft to Mars each time first questions they will ask is: Is it related to us?
it and Earth are suitably aligned, every 26 months. An important realization of the past 10 years is
In addition, researchers now plan a series of Mars that the planets of the inner solar system may not
micromissions: infrastructure and technology have been biologically isolated. Viable organisms
demonstrations that take advantage of surplus pay- could have moved among Mars, Earth and Venus
enclosed in rocks ejected by large impacts. Thus, By 2050 we will have catalogues of extrasolar
whichever world first developed life may have then planetary systems analogous to our current cata-
inoculated the others. If life exists on Mars, we logues of stars. We will know whether our particu-
may share a common ancestor with it. If so, DNA lar planetary system is typical or unusual (we sus-
comparison could help us determine the world of pect it will prove to be neither). Currently the only
origin. Of course, should Martian life be of inde- worlds our technology routinely detects are giant
pendent origin from life on Earth, it may lack planets more massive than Jupiter. But advanced
DNA altogether. The discovery of a second genesis space-based telescopes will regularly detect Earth-
within our solar system would suggest that life de- size worlds around other stars, if they exist, and
velops wherever it can; such a finding would but- analyze their atmospheres for hints of biological
Lurking in the depths of tress arguments for the ubiquity of life throughout processes. Such worlds would then become com-
Europa could be our fellow the universe [see “The Search for Extraterrestrial pelling targets for additional observations, includ-
inhabitants of the solar Life,” by Carl Sagan; Scientific American, Octo- ing searches for intelligent signals.
system. The surface of ber 1994].
Europa, mishmashed by An essential part of our exploration of Mars Window on the Worlds
icebergs, hints at a and other worlds will be planetary protection.
subterranean ocean. Life
survives deep in Earth’s crust
and oceans. Could it survive
NASA now has guidelines to protect the worlds
that it visits against contamination with micro-
organisms carried from Earth. We have much to
A lthough we talk of searching for extraterrestri-
al intelligence (SETI), what we are seeking is
evidence of extraterrestrial technologies. It might
on this world, too? learn about reducing the bioload of spacecraft we be better to use the acronym SET-T (pronounced
launch elsewhere. Progress is demanded—scien- the same) to acknowledge this. To date, we have ILLUSTRATION BY RON MILLER
tifically by the requirement of not introducing concentrated on a very specific technology—radio
false positives, legally by international treaty and, transmissions at wavelengths with weak natural
we believe, ethically by the imperative to protect backgrounds and little absorption [see “The Search
any alien biospheres. for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” by Carl Sagan and
And what about other planetary systems? Al- Frank Drake; Scientific American, May 1975].
ready we know of more planets outside our solar No one has yet found any verified signs of a distant
system than within it. Well before 2050 the first technology. But the null result may have more to do
truly interstellar missions will be flying out of our with limitations in range and sensitivity than with
solar system, perhaps sent on the wings of giant so- actual lack of civilizations. The most distant star
lar sails. They will directly sample the prolific or- probed directly is still less than 1 percent of the dis-
ganic chemistry (already revealed by radio tele- tance across our galaxy.
scopes) present between the stars. They will not SETI, like all of radio astronomy, now faces a
reach the nearest systems by 2050—with present crisis. Humanity’s voracious appetite for technolo-
technology, the trip would take tens of thousands gies that utilize the radio spectrum is rapidly ob-
of years—so we will have to study those systems scuring the natural window with curtains of radio-
remotely. frequency interference. This trend might eventual-

ly force us to take our search to the far side of the of astroengineering. But what if it flashed for only The Authors
moon, the one place in the solar system that never a billionth of a second? Limited searches for opti-
has Earth in its sky. International agreements have cal pulses have just begun. In the coming decades,
already established a “shielded zone” on the optical SETI searches may move on to larger tele-
moon, and some astronomers have discussed re- scopes. If these initial searches do not succeed in
serving the Saha crater for radio telescopes. If the finding other civilizations, they will at least probe
path for human exploration of Mars proceeds via astrophysical backgrounds at high time resolution.
the moon, then by 2050 the necessary infrastruc- The increased pace of solar system exploration
ture may be in place. will provide additional opportunities for SETI. We
SETI INSTITUTE
Plans for the next few decades of SETI also envi- should keep our robotic eyes open for probes or
sion the construction of a variety of ground-based other artifacts of an extraterrestrial technology. De-
instruments that offer greater sensitivity, frequency spite tabloid reports of aliens and artifacts every-
coverage and observing time. Currently all these where, scientific exploration so far has revealed no JILL C. TARTER participated in
plans rely on private philanthropic funding. For good evidence for any such things. her first search for extraterres-
searches at radio frequencies, work has com- trial intelligence in 1976 while
menced on the One Hectare Telescope (1hT), Sharing the Universe an astrophysics graduate
which will permit simultaneous access to the entire student at the University of
microwave window. A large field of view—and a
large amount of computational power—will en-
able dozens of objects to be observed at the same
A lthough we cannot state with confidence what
we will know about other intelligent occupants
of the universe in 2050, we can predict that whatev-
California, Berkeley. Her current
effort is over 1,000 times as
sensitive. Tarter’s career bears
time, a mix of SETI targets and natural astronomi- er we know, everyone will know. Everyone will a striking resemblance to that
cal bodies. Radio astronomy and SETI will thus be have access to the process of discovery. Anyone of Ellie Arroway, the heroine of
able to share telescope resources, rather than com- who is curious will be able to keep score of what Carl Sagan’s novel Contact.
pete for them, as is frequently the case now. The searches have been done and which groups are Today she is the director of
1hT will also demonstrate one affordable way to looking at what, from where, at any given moment. research for the SETI Institute in
build a still larger Square Kilometer Array (SKA) The data generated by the searches will flow too Mountain View, Calif. When not
that could improve sensitivity by a factor of 100 quickly for humans to absorb, but the interesting observing, lecturing or fund-
over anything available today. For SETI, this factor signals, selected by silicon sieves, will be available raising, she enjoys flying a
of 100 translates into a factor of 10 in distance and for our perusal. In this way, we hope to supplant private plane and dancing the
1,000 in the number of stars explored. the purveyors of pseudoscience who attract the cu- samba.
These arrays will be affordable because their rious and invite them into a fantastic (and lucrative)
hardware will derive from recent consumer prod- realm of nonsense. Today the real data are too often
ucts. To the extent possible, complexity will be inaccessible, whereas the manufactured data are
transferred from concrete and steel to silicon and widely available. The real thing is better, and it will
software. We will be betting on Moore’s Law—the be much easier to access in the future.
exponential increase in computing power over If by 2050 we have found no evidence of an ex-
time. The SETI@home screensaver, which more traterrestrial technology, it may be because technical
than a million people around the globe have down- intelligence almost never evolves, or because techni-
loaded (from www.setiathome.ssl.berkeley. edu), il- cal civilizations rapidly bring about their own de-
lustrates the kind of parallel computation available struction, or because we have not yet conducted an
SETI INSTITUTE
even today. By 2050 we may have built many adequate search using the right strategy. If hu-
SKAs and used them to excise actively the growing mankind is still here in 2050 and still capable of do-
amount of interference. If successful, such instru- ing SETI searches, it will mean that our technology
ments will certainly be more affordable than an ob- has not yet been our own undoing—a hopeful sign CHRISTOPHER F. CHYBA
servatory on the lunar far side. for life generally. By then we may begin considering is a planetary scientist whose
Recently other wavelength bands besides the ra- the active transmission of a signal for someone else research focuses on the origins of
dio have been receiving attention. Generations of to find, at which point we will have to tackle the life and exobiology. He recently
stargazers have scanned the heavens with naked difficult questions of who will speak for Earth and led the Science Definition Team
eyes and telescopes without ever seeing an artifact what they will say. for NASA’s 2003 Orbiter mission to
Europa. He now chairs the space
Further Information agency’s Solar System
Exploration Subcommittee,
INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE. I. S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan. Holden-Day, 1966. which recommends priorities
EXTRATERRESTRIALS: SCIENCE AND ALIEN INTELLIGENCE. Edited by Edward Regis, Jr. Cambridge University for solar system exploration.
Press, 1985. Chyba is a former director for
THE SEARCH FOR LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE. Donald Goldsmith and Tobias Owen. Addison-Wesley, 1992. international environmental
IS ANYONE OUT THERE? THE SCIENTIFIC SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE. Frank Drake and affairs on the National Security
Dava Sobel. Delacorte Press, 1992. Council staff at the White House.
EXTRATERRESTRIALS — WHERE ARE THEY? Edited by Ben Zuckerman and Michael H. Hart. Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1995. At the SETI Institute, he holds
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM: CURRENT ISSUES. Christopher F. Chyba and Gene D. McDonald in the endowed chair named for
Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Vol. 23, pages 215–249; 1995. his graduate school adviser,
SHARING THE UNIVERSE: PERSPECTIVES ON EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE. Seth Shostak. Berkeley Hills Books, 1998. Carl Sagan.
Profile
originally published November 2002
An Ear to the Stars

Despite long odds, astronomer Jill C. Tarter forges ahead to improve the chances
of picking up signs of extraterrestrial intelligence By NAOMI LUBICK
In a photograph hanging outside her office, Jill C. out to come from a telescope operator’s CB radio.
Tarter stands a head taller than Jodie Foster, the actress Tarter’s current project is the Allen Telescope Ar-
who played an idealistic young radio astronomer ray, consisting of a set of about 350 small satellite dish-
named Ellie Arroway in the film Contact. Tarter was es in Hat Creek, Calif. The system, which will span
not the model for the driven researcher at the center of about 10,000 square meters and will be the first radio-
Carl Sagan’s book of the same name, although she un- telescope array built specifically for SETI projects, is
derstands why people often make that assumption. In funded by private investors. Its observing speed will be
fact, she herself did so after reading the page proofs that 100 times as fast as that of today’s equipment, and it
Sagan had sent her in 1985. After all, both she and Ar- will expand observable frequency ranges.
roway were only children whose fathers encouraged Tarter has often been a lone and nontraditional en-
their interest in science and who died when they were tity in her environment. Her interest in science, which
still young girls. And both staked their lives and careers began with engineering physics, was nurtured by her fa-
on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), no ther, who died when she was 12. As with most other fe-
matter how long the odds of detecting an otherworldly male scientists of her generation, Tarter says, a father’s
sign. But no, Tarter says, the character is actually Sagan encouragement was “just enough to make the difference
himself— they all just share the same passion. about whether you blew off the negative counseling”
In her position as director of the Center for SETI Re- that girls interested in science often got. Her mother
search at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., worried about her when she departed in the 1960s from
Tarter has recently focused on developing new tech- their suburban New York home for Cornell University,
nology for observing radio signals from the universe. when women there were still locked in their dorms
The concept, first presented in the 1950s, is that a tech- overnight. She was the only female student in the engi-
nologically advanced civilization will leak radio signals. neering school that year. (Tarter is a descendant of Ezra
Some may even be transmitting purposefully. Cornell, the university’s founder, although at the time
So far there haven’t been any confirmed detections. her gender meant that she would not receive the family
Amid the radio chatter from natural and human scholarship.)
sources, there have been some hiccups and a few heart- “There’s an enormous amount of problem solving,
stoppingly close calls. On her first observing run at of homework sets to be done as an engineering stu-
Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, Tarter de- dent,” Tarter recalls. Whereas male students formed
tected a signal that was clearly not natural. But it turned teams, sharing the workload, “I sat in my dorm and did
them all by myself.” Puzzling out the problems alone
JILL C. TARTER: SETI SEARCHER gave her a better education in some ways, she says, but
“it was socially very isolating, and I lost the ability to
■ Grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y., and is a descendant of Cornell University’s founder. build teaming skills.”
■ Most influential cartoon: Flash Gordon. Her independence and eventual distaste for engi-
■ In the July Astronomical Journal, she and two colleagues conclude that neering led her to do her graduate work in physics at
there are no more than 10,000 civilizations in the Milky Way at about our Cornell, but Tarter soon left for the University of Cal-
level of technological advancement. ifornia at Berkeley to pursue a doctorate in astronomy.
■ “I just can’t ever remember a time when I didn’t assume that the stars were While working on her Ph.D., which she completed in
somebody else’s suns.” 1975, Tarter was also busy raising a daughter from her

first marriage, to C. Bruce Tarter, who has directed Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory for the past eight years. The
two had married in Tarter’s junior year of college and moved
to California together. Tarter’s postdoctoral work there was on
brown dwarfs, a term she coined in the 1970s for what was
then a hypothetical planetlike body (only recently have they
been observed directly).
By chance, an ancient computer led Tarter to SETI. She had
programmed a signal-processing machine as a first-year gradu-
ate student. When astronomer Stuart Bowyer acquired the com-
puter from a colleague several years later for a SETI project—lack
of funds forced Bowyer into looking for handouts— he ap-
proached Tarter, because someone remembered that she had
used it.
To persuade her to join the project, Bowyer placed a copy of
a report on her desk called Project Cyclops, a NASA study con-
ducted by Bernard M. Oliver of Hewlett Packard Corp. on pos-
sible system designs for detecting extraterrestrial life. Tarter read
the hefty volume cover to cover in one night. Hooked on the idea
of SETI, she would work with Frank Drake, who in 1960 con-
ducted Ozma, the first American SETI project, and with William ALLEN TELESCOPE ARRAY (based on artist’s conception) will begin working
“Jack” Welch, who taught her radio astronomy and would be- in 2005. Each antenna has a shroud to block ground reflections.
come her second husband in 1980. Astronomer John Billingham
hired her to join the small group of SETI researchers at NASA, a ers. She picked up her grueling pace of going to observatories
group that Tarter helped to turn into the SETI Institute in 1984. and attending meetings— not to mention consulting for the
She became director of SETI’s Project Phoenix in 1993, so named movie version of Contact— as soon as her therapy ended.
because it was resurrected after Congress removed its funding. The SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array, to start up in
The SETI project has always seemed to be NASA’s astro- 2005, will be Tarter’s largest contribution to instrumentation
nomical stepchild, Tarter explains, partly because of the “little yet. Thanks to advances in computers and telecommunications,
green men” associations. But the congressional rejection of the the cost of the array is much lower than that of past setups. For
search for intelligent life paradoxically gave new life to its pursuit. instance, each 27-meter-wide dish of the Very Large Array in
Operating outside the confines of NASA’s bureaucracy, Socorro, N.M., cost several million dollars in the late 1970s,
Tarter says, the SETI Institute runs like a nonprofit business. The whereas the SETI Institute paid only $50,000 per dish for the
current funding for projects has come from venture capitalists— Allen array. Each dish measures 6.1 meters wide and will be set
wealthy scientific philanthropists such as Paul G. Allen and up in a carefully selected, random pattern. The U.C. Berkeley
Nathan P. Myhrvold, both formerly at Microsoft. Some con- Radio Astronomy Lab and the SETI Institute will co-manage it.
tributors also serve with scientists on a board that supervises The small dishes will be more mobile than the 305-meter-wide
SETI’s business plan, procedures and results. stationary dish at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, where Tarter currently
Tarter’s efforts to push SETI forward with private financing does most of her observing. The Allen array will hear frequencies
impress even skeptics of the enterprise. Benjamin M. Zucker- from 0.5 to 11.2 gigahertz, a span 20 times as wide as what ra-
man, a radio astronomer who began his career with SETI, is dio telescopes can detect, and results will be high-resolution im-
blunt in his disbelief in both the search for and the existence of ages of the sky, with a dozen target stars observed at once. Plus,
extraterrestrial intelligence. Still, he finds Tarter’s work excep- the institute will be able to give time to other observers—instead
tional and notes that by keeping the public interested in SETI, of competing for it elsewhere.
Tarter has enabled astronomers to continue esoteric work. Tarter strongly believes in the search for extraterrestrial in-
Tarter, too, has been able to overcome her solo work ten- telligence, although unlike Ellie Arroway, she seems to accept
dencies. Her SETI collaborators say she has been an indomitable that a momentous signal may not come in her lifetime. Mean-
and tireless team leader. Yet a bout with breast cancer in 1995 while she is happy to push the technological boundaries of the
LY LY SETI Institute
may have been a defining moment of her ability to delegate au- earth’s listening posts and is already planning even larger tele-
thority. Radiation and chemotherapy treatment required that scopes for future Arroways to use.
she step down temporarily as Phoenix project manager and cut
back on her travel, thereby forcing her to assign tasks to oth- Naomi Lubick is based in Palo Alto, Calif.
originally published in Magnificent Cosmos-Spring 1998
Searching
for Life
in Our
Solar
System
If life evolved
independently on
our neighboring
planets or moons,
then where are the
most likely places to
look for evidence of
extraterrestrial
organisms?
by Bruce M. Jakosky
S ince antiquity, human beings have imagined life

spread far and wide in the universe. Only recently
has science caught up, as we have come to under-
stand the nature of life on Earth and the possibility
that life exists elsewhere. Recent discoveries of planets orbit-
ing other stars and of possible fossil evidence in Martian me-
teorites have gained considerable public acclaim. And the sci-
with life, we can use it to understand the conditions needed
to spawn life elsewhere. As we define these conditions, though,
we need to consider whether they are specific to life on Earth
or general enough to apply anywhere.
Our geologic record tells us that life on Earth started shortly
after life’s existence became possible—only after protoplanets
(small, planetlike objects) stopped bombarding our planet near
entific case for life elsewhere has grown stronger during the the end of its formation. The last “Earth-sterilizing” giant im-
past decade. There is now a sense that we are verging on the pact probably occurred between 4.4 and 4.0 billion years ago.
discovery of life on other planets. Fossil microscopic cells and carbon isotopic evidence suggest
To search for life in our solar system, we need to start at that life had grown widespread some 3.5 billion years ago and
home. Because Earth is our only example of a planet endowed may have existed before 3.85 billion years ago.
DENDRITIC VALLEYS ON MARS resemble river drainage systems on Earth,
spanning roughly one kilometer across and several hundred meters deep.
Occurring primarily on ancient, cratered terrain, the valleys may have
formed from atmospheric precipitation or from underground water that
flowed onto the surface. Compared with Earth’s drainage systems, the
Martian valleys show a lower channel density (number of channels per
square kilometer), suggesting that on early Mars water was less abundant
than it is on Earth.
ical reactions to combine gaseous molecules. A more recent

theory offers a tantalizing alternative. As water circulates
through ocean-floor volcanic systems, it heats to temperatures
above 400 degrees Celsius (720 degrees Fahrenheit). When
that superhot water returns to the ocean, it can chemically re-
duce agents, facilitating the formation of organic molecules.
This reducing environment also provides an energy source to
help organic molecules combine into larger structures and to
foster primitive metabolic reactions.
Where Did Life Originate?
T he significance of hydrothermal systems in life’s his-

tory appears in the “tree of life,” constructed re-
cently from genetic sequences in RNA molecules,
which carry forward genetic information. This tree arises
from differences in RNA sequences common to all of Earth’s
living organisms. Organisms evolving little since their sepa-
ration from their last common ancestor have similar RNA
base sequences. Those organisms closest to the “root”—or
last common ancestor of all living organisms—are hyper-
thermophiles, which live in hot water, possibly as high as
115 degrees C. This relationship indicates either that terres-
trial life “passed through” hydrothermal systems at some
early time or that life’s origin took place within such systems.
Either way, the earliest history of life reveals an intimate con-
nection to hydrothermal systems.
As we consider possible occurrences of life elsewhere in the
solar system, we can generalize environmental conditions re-
quired for life to emerge and flourish. We assume that liquid
water is necessary—a medium through which primitive or-
ganisms can gain nutrients and disperse waste. Although
other liquids, such as methane or ammonia, could serve the
same function, water is likely to have been much more abun-
dant, as well as chemically better for precipitating reactions
COURTESY OF BRUCE M. JAKOSKY
necessary to spark biological activity.
To create the building blocks from which life can assemble
itself, one needs access to biogenic elements. On Earth, these
elements include carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur
Once it became safe for life to exist, no more than half a and phosphorus, among the two dozen or so others playing
billion years—and perhaps as little as 100 million to 200 mil- a pivotal role in life. Although life elsewhere might not use
lion years—passed before life rooted itself firmly on Earth. This exactly the same elements, we would expect it to use many
short time span indicates that life’s origin followed a relatively of them. Life on Earth utilizes carbon (over silicon, for ex-
straightforward process, the natural consequence of chemical ample) because of its versatility in forming chemical bonds,
reactions in a geologically active environment. Equally impor- rather than strictly its abundance. Carbon also exists readily as
tant, this observation tells us that life may originate along sim- carbon dioxide, available as a gas or dissolved in water. Sili-
ilar lines in any place with chemical and environmental condi- con dioxide, on the other hand, exists plentifully in neither
tions akin to those of Earth. form and would be much less accessible. Given the ubiquity
The standard wisdom of the past 40 years holds that prebio- of carbon-containing organic molecules throughout the uni-
logical organic molecules formed in a so-called reducing atmo- verse, we would expect carbon to play a role in life anywhere.
sphere, with energy sources such as lightning triggering chem- Of course, an energy source must drive chemical disequi-
CATASTROPHIC OUTFLOW CHANNEL on Mars—Dao Vallis—is on the flanks of
the volcano Hadriaca Patera. Scientists believe the volcano’s heat may have
caused groundwater to well up, or erupt, onto Mars’s surface at this location.
The possible combination of volcanic energy and water makes this an
intriguing place to search for life.
would have warmed the planet enough to permit liquid water

to remain stable. Subsequent to 3.5 billion years ago, evidence
tells us that the planet’s crust did contain much water. Evi-
dently, catastrophic floods, bursting from below the planet’s
surface, carved out great flood channels. These floods oc-
curred periodically over geologic time. Based on this evidence,
liquid water should exist several kilometers underground,
where geothermal heating would raise temperatures to the
melting point of ice.
Mars also has had rich energy sources throughout time. Vol-
COURTESY OF BRUCE M. JAKOSKY
canism has supplied heat from the earliest epochs to the re-
cent past, as have impact events. Additional energy to sustain
life can come from the weathering of volcanic rocks. Oxida-
tion of iron within basalt, for example, releases energy that
organisms can use.
The plentiful availability of biogenic elements on Mars’s sur-
librium, which fosters the reactions necessary to spawn living face completes life’s requirements. Given the presence of water
systems. On Earth today, nearly all of life’s energy comes from and energy, Mars may well have independently originated life.
the sun, through photosynthesis. Yet chemical energy sources Moreover, even if life did not originate on Mars, life still
suffice—and would be more readily available for early life. could be present there. Just as high-velocity impacts have jet-
These sources would include geochemical energy from hy- tisoned Martian surface rocks into space—only to fall on
drothermal systems near volcanoes or chemical energy from Earth as Martian meteorites—rocks from Earth could similarly
the weathering of minerals at or near a planet’s surface. have landed on the red planet. Should they contain organ-
isms that survive the journey and should they land in suitable
Possibilities for Life on Mars Martian habitats, the bacteria could survive. Or, for all we
L
know, life could have originated on Mars and been trans-
ooking beyond Earth, two planets show strong evi- planted subsequently to Earth.
dence for having had environmental conditions suit- An inventory of energy available on Mars suggests that
able to originate life at some time in their history— enough is present to support life. Whether photosynthesis
Mars and Europa. (For this purpose, we will consider Europa, evolved, and thereby allowed life to move into other ecological
a moon of Jupiter, to be a planetary body.) niches, remains uncertain. Certainly, data returned from the
Mars today is not very hospitable. Daily average tempera- Viking spacecraft during the 1970s presented no evidence that
tures rarely rise much above 220 kelvins, some 53 kelvins be- life is widespread on Mars. Yet it is possible that some Mar-
low water’s freezing point. Despite this drawback, abundant tian life currently exists, cloistered in isolated, energy-rich
evidence suggests that liquid water has existed on Mars’s sur- and water-laden niches—perhaps in volcanically heated, subsur-
face in the past and probably is present within its crust today. face hydrothermal systems or merely underground, drawing
Networks of dendritic valleys on the oldest Martian sur- energy from chemical interactions of liquid water and rock.
faces look like those on Earth formed by running water. The Recent analysis of Martian meteorites found on Earth has led
water may have come from atmospheric precipitation or “sap- many scientists to conclude that life may have once thrived on
ping,” released from a crustal aquifer. Regardless of where it Mars—based on fossil remnants seen within the rock [see box
came from, liquid water undoubtedly played a role. The val- below]. Yet this evidence does not definitively indicate bio-
leys’ dendritic structure indicates that they formed gradually, logical activity; indeed, it may result from natural geochemical
meaning that water once may have flowed on Mars’s surface, processes. Even if scientists determine that these rocks con-
although we do not observe such signs today. tain no evidence of Martian life, life on the red planet might
In addition, ancient impact craters larger than about 15 still be possible—but in locations not yet searched. To draw a
kilometers (nine miles) in diameter have degraded heavily, definitive conclusion, we must study those places where life
showing no signs of ejecta blankets, the raised rims or central (or evidence of past life) will most likely appear.
peaks typically present on fresh craters. Some partly eroded
craters display gullies on their walls, which look water-carved. Europa
E
Craters smaller than about 15 kilometers have eroded away
entirely. The simplest explanation holds that surface water uropa, on the other hand, presents a different possi-
eroded the craters. ble scenario for life’s origin. At first glance, Europa
Although the history of Mars’s atmosphere is obscure, the seems an unlikely place for life. The largest of
atmosphere may have been denser during the earliest epochs, Jupiter’s satellites, Europa is a little bit smaller than our
3.5 to 4.0 billion years ago. Correspondingly, a denser atmo- moon, and its surface is covered with nearly pure ice. Yet Eu-
sphere could have yielded a strong greenhouse effect, which ropa’s interior may be less frigid, warmed by a combination of
radioactive decay and tidal heating, which could raise the for possible life, as would the weathering of minerals reacting
temperature above the melting point of ice at relatively shal- with water. Thus, Europa has all the ingredients from which
low depths. Because the layer of surface ice stands 150 to to spark life. Of course, less chemical energy is likely to exist
300 kilometers thick, a global, ice-covered ocean of liquid on Europa than Mars, so we should not expect to see an
water may exist underneath. abundance of life, if any. Although the Galileo space probe
Recent images of Europa’s surface from the Galileo space- has detected organic molecules and frozen water on Callisto
craft reveal the possible presence of at least transient pockets and Ganymede, two of Jupiter’s four Galilean satellites, these
of liquid water. Globally, the surface appears covered with moons lack the energy sources that life would require to take
long grooves or cracks. On a smaller scale, these quasilinear hold. Only Io, also a Galilean satellite, has volcanic heat—yet
features show detailed structures indicating local ice-related it has no liquid water, necessary to sustain life as we know it.
tectonic activity and infilling from below. On the smallest Mars and Europa stand today as the only places in our solar
scale, blocks of ice are present. By tracing the crisscrossing system that we can identify as having (or having had) all ingre-
grooves, the blocks clearly have moved with respect to the dients necessary to spawn life. Yet they are not the only plane-
larger mass. They appear similar to sea ice on Earth—as if tary bodies in our solar system relevant to exobiology. In partic-
large ice blocks had broken off the main mass, floated a ular, we can look at Venus and at Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.
small distance away and then frozen in place. Unfortunately, Venus currently remains too hot to sustain life, with scorching
we cannot yet determine if the ice blocks floated through liq- surface temperatures around 750 kelvins, sustained by green-
uid water or slid on relatively warm, soft ice. The dearth of im- house warming from carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide gases.
pact craters on the ice indicates that fresh ice continually Any liquid water has long since disappeared into space.
resurfaces Europa. It is also likely that liquid water is present
at least on an intermittent basis. Venus and Titan
W
If Europa has liquid water at all, then that water probably
exists at the interface between the ice and underlying rocky in- hy are Venus and Earth so different? If Earth
terior. Europa’s rocky center probably has had volcanic activ- orbited the sun at the same distance that
ity—perhaps at a level similar to that of Earth’s moon, which Venus does, en Earth, too, would blister with
rumbled with volcanism until about 3.0 billion years ago. heat—causing more water vapor to fill the atmosphere and
The volcanism within its core would create an energy source augmenting the greenhouse effect. Positive feedback would
Microbial Remnants from Mars?
I n 1984, sur veying the Far Western

Icefield of the Allan Hills Region of
Antarctica, geologist Roberta Score plucked
Tiny iron oxide and iron sulfide grains, re-
sembling ones produced by bacteria on
Earth, appear in the globules, as do particular
The tubes’ size and shape indicate they may
be fossilized pieces of bacteria, or tinier
“nanobacteria,” which on Earth measure 20 to
from a plain of wind-blasted, bluish, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, often 400 nanometers long.
10,000-year-old ice an unusual greenish- found alongside decaying microbes. Other These findings collectively led NASA scien-
gray rock. Back at the National Aeronautics ovoid and tubular structures resemble fos- tists Everett K. Gibson, David S. McKay and
and Space Administration Johnson silized terrestrial bacteria themselves. Al- their colleagues to announce in August 1996
Space Center and at Stanford University, though the structures range from 30 to 700 that microbes might once have flourished on
researchers confirmed that the 1.9- nanometers (billionths of meters) in length, the red planet. Recent chemical analyses re-
kilogram (four-pound), potato-size rock— some of the most intriguing tubes measure veal, however, that ALH84001 is heavily con-
designated ALH84001—was a meteorite roughly 380 nanometers long—a size near- taminated with amino acids from Antarctic
from Mars, one with a remarkable history. ing the low end of that for terrestrial bacteria, ice, a result that weakens the case for micro-
Crystallizing 4.5 billion years ago, shortly which are typically one to 10 microns long. fossils from Mars. —Richard Lipkin
after Mars’s formation, the rock was ejected
from the red planet by a powerful impact,
which sent it hurtling through space for 16
million years until it landed in Antarctica
13,000 years ago. Geochemists concluded
that the rock’s distribution of oxygen iso-
topes, minerals and structural features was
consistent with those of five other meteorites
identified as coming from Mars. Lining the
walls of fractures within the meteorite are
carbonate globules, each a flattened sphere
NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER
measuring 20 to 250 microns (millionths of

meters). The globules appear to have formed
in a carbon-dioxide-saturated fluid, possibly
water, between 1.3 and 3.6 billion years ago.
Within those globules, provocative features
vaguely resemble fossilized remnants of an- SEEMINGLY FORMED in the Martian meteorite ALH84001, a segmented object (above), some 380
cient Martian microbes. nanometers long, vaguely resembles fossilized bacteria from Earth.
EUROPA’S SURFACE is lined with features that suggest “ice tectonics.”
Blocks of ice appear to have broken up and shifted, perhaps sliding on
slush or possibly even floating on liquid water. Either way, spectral
analysis of reflected light indicates nearly pure water ice on Europa’s
surface. The horizontal black bars through the image designate data
lost during interplanetary transmission.
Titan apparently had some liquid water during its early histo-
ry. Impacts during its formation would have deposited
enough heat (from the kinetic energy of the object) to melt
frozen water locally. Deposits of liquid water might have per-
sisted for thousands of years before freezing. Every part of Ti-
tan’s surface probably has melted at least once. The degree to
which biochemical reactions may have proceeded during such
a short time interval is uncertain, however.
Exploratory Missions
C
JPL/NASA
learly, the key ingredients needed for life have been

present in our solar system for a long time and may
be present today outside of Earth. At one time or
spur this cycle, with more water, greater greenhouse warm- another, four planetary bodies may have contained the neces-
ing and so on saturating the atmosphere and sending temper- sary conditions to generate life.
atures soaring. Because temperature plays such a strong role We can determine life’s actual existence elsewhere only em-
in determining the atmosphere’s water content, both Earth pirically, and the search for life has taken center stage in the
and Venus have a temperature threshold, above which the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s ongoing
positive feedback of an increasing greenhouse effect takes off. science missions. The Mars Surveyor series of missions,
This feedback loop would load Venus’s atmosphere with wa- scheduled to take place during the coming decade, aims to
ter, which in turn would catapult its temperatures to very high determine if Mars ever had life. This series will culminate in a
values. Below this threshold, its climate would have been more mission currently scheduled for launch in 2005, to collect
like that of Earth. Martian rocks from regions of possible biological relevance
Venus, though, may not always have been so inhospitable. and return them to Earth for detailed analysis. The Cassini
Four billion years ago the sun emitted about 30 percent less spacecraft currently is en route to Saturn. There the Huygens
energy than it does today. With less sunlight, the boundary be- probe will enter Titan’s atmosphere, its goal to decipher Ti-
tween clement and runaway climates may have been inside tan’s composition and chemistry. A radar instrument, too,
Venus’s orbit, and Venus may have had surface temperatures will map Titan’s surface, looking both for geologic clues to its
only 100 degrees C above Earth’s current temperature. Life history and evidence of exposed lakes or oceans of methane
could survive quite readily at those temperatures—as we ob- and ethane.
serve with certain bacteria and bioorganisms living near hot Moreover, the Galileo orbiter of Jupiter is focusing its ex-
springs and undersea vents. As the sun became hotter, Venus tended mission on studying the surface and interior of Eu-
would have warmed gradually until it would have undergone ropa. Plans are under way to launch a spacecraft mission
a catastrophic transition to a thick, hot atmosphere. It is pos- dedicated to Europa, to discern its geologic and geochemical
sible that Venus originated life several billion years ago but history and to determine if a global ocean lies underneath its
that high temperatures and geologic activity have since oblit- icy shell.
erated all evidence of a biosphere. As the sun continues to Of course, it is possible that, as we plumb the depths of our
heat up, Earth may undergo a similar catastrophic transition own solar system, no evidence of life will turn up. If life as-
only a couple of billion years from now. sembles itself from basic building blocks as easily as we be-
Titan intrigues us because of abundant evidence of organic lieve it does, then life should turn up elsewhere. Indeed, life’s
chemical activity in its atmosphere, similar to what might absence would lead us to question our understanding of life’s
have occurred on the early Earth if its atmosphere had potent origin here on Earth. Whether or not we find life, we will gain
abilities to reduce chemical agents. Titan is about as big as a tremendous insight into our own history and whether life is
Mercury, with an atmosphere thicker than Earth’s, consisting rare or widespread in our galaxy.
predominantly of nitrogen, methane and ethane. Methane
must be continually resupplied from the surface or subsur-
face, because photochemical reactions in the atmosphere
drive off hydrogen (which is lost to space) and convert the The Author
methane to longer chains of organic molecules. These longer- BRUCE M. JAKOSKY is professor of geology and a member
chain hydrocarbons are thought to provide the dense haze of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the Uni-
that obscures Titan’s surface at visible wavelengths. versity of Colorado at Boulder. He is also an investigator on the
Surface temperatures on Titan stand around 94 kelvins, Mars Global Surveyor mission currently in orbit around Mars.
His book The Search for Life on Other Planets will be published
too cold to sustain either liquid water or nonphotochemical in the summer of 1998 by Cambridge University Press.
reactions that could produce biological activity—although

originally published April 1996
Searching for Life

on Other Planets
Life remains a phenomenon we know
only on Earth. But an innovative telescope
in space could change that by detecting
signs of life on distant planets
by J. Roger P. Angel and Neville J. Woolf
T he possibility that we are not

alone in the universe has fasci-
nated people for centuries. In
the 1600s Galileo Galilei peered into the
night sky with his newly invented tele-
and other stars may have evolved living
organisms. Finding extraterrestrial life
may seem a Herculean task, but within
the next decade, we could build the
equipment needed to locate planets with
scope, recognized mountains on the life-forms like the primitive ones on
moon, and noted that other planets were Earth.
spheres like Earth. About 60 years later The largest and most powerful tele-
other stargazers observed polar ice caps scope now in space, the Hubble Space
on Mars, as well as color variations on Telescope, can just make out mountains
the planet’s surface, which they believed on Mars. Pictures sharp enough to dis-
to be vegetation changing with the sea- play geologic features of planets around
sons (the colors are now known to be other stars would require an array of
the result of dust storms). During the space telescopes the size of the U.S. Fur-
latter part of this century, cameras on thermore, as Carl Sagan of Cornell Uni-
board unmanned spacecraft captured versity has pointed out, pictures of Earth
images from Mars of channels carved do not reveal the presence of life unless
by long gone rivers, offering hope that they are taken at very high resolution.
life once may have existed there. But Detailed images could be obtained with
samples of Martian soil obtained in the unmanned spacecraft sent to other solar
1970s by the Viking lander spacecraft systems, but the huge distance between
lacked material evidence of any life. In- Earth and any other planet is a distinct
deed, the present conditions in the rest drawback to this approach—it would
of our solar system seem to be generally take millennia to travel to another solar
incompatible with life like that found system and send back useful images.
on Earth. Taking photographs, however, is not
But our search for extraterrestrial life the best way to start studying distant
has recently been extended—we can planets. Astronomers instead rely on the
now turn our attention to planets out- technique of spectroscopy to obtain most
side our own solar system. After years of their information. In spectroscopy,
of looking, astronomers have turned up light originating from an object in space
ALFRED T. KAMAJIAN
evidence of planets orbiting three dis- can be analyzed for unique markers that
tant stars similar to our sun [see box on help researchers piece together charac-
pages 23 and 24]. Planets around these teristics such as the celestial body’s tem-
SPACE-BASED TELESCOPE SYSTEM that can search for life-bearing planets has
been proposed by the authors. The instrument, a type of interferometer, could be as-
sembled at the proposed international space station (lower left). Subsequently, electric
propulsion would send the 50- to 75-meter-long device into an orbit around the sun
roughly the same as Jupiter’s. Such a mission is at the focus of the National Aeronau-
tics and Space Administration’s plans to study neighboring planetary systems.
21 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. NOVEMBER 2002
New Planets around Sunlike Stars
U ntil recently, astronomers had no direct evidence that planets of any
kind orbited other stars resembling the sun. Then, last October, Michel
Mayor and Didier Queloz of the Geneva Observatory announced the detection
mum 2.3 times that of Jupiter; it would not seem terribly out of place in our
own solar system.
The third new body, also identified by Marcy and Butler, circles the star 70
of a massive planet circling the sunlike star 51 Pegasi [see “Strange Places,” Virginis. This “planet” is rather different from the other two. It is the heftiest
by Corey S. Powell, “Science and the Citizen,” SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, January of the group, having at least 6.5 times the mass of Jupiter, and its 117-day
1996]. Geoffrey W. Marcy and R. Paul Butler of San Francisco State Universi- orbit has a highly elliptical shape. Marcy has asserted that it lies in the
ty and the University of California at Berkeley swiftly confirmed the finding “Goldilocks zone,” the range of distances where a planet’s temperature
and, just three months later, turned up two more bodies orbiting other, sim- could be “just right” for water to exist in liquid form.
ilar stars, proving the first discovery was no fluke. Despite such optimistic talk, this giant planet probably has a deep,
Nobody has actually seen these alien worlds; all three were identified in- suffocating atmosphere that offers poor prospects for life. In fact,
directly, by measuring the way they influenced the movement of their par- based on its great mass and elliptical orbit, many scientists argue that
ent stars. As an object orbits a star, its gravitational pull causes the star to the 70 Virginis companion should be classified not as a planet at all
wobble back and forth. That motion creates a periodic displacement, known but as a brown dwarf, a gaseous object that forms somewhat like a star but
as a Doppler shift, in the spectrum of the star as seen from Earth. The pat- lacks enough mass to shine.
tern of the shift reveals the size and shape of the companion’s orbit; the
shift’s magnitude indicates the companion’s minimum possible mass. No
other details (temperature or composition, for instance) can be discerned
through the Doppler technique.
T here is a reason why astronomers are finding only massive bodies in
fairly short-period orbits: these are the kind that are easiest to discern
using the Doppler technique. Uncovering a planet in a slow orbit akin to
Even from that limited information, it is clear that the new planets are un- Jupiter’s would require at least a decade of high-precision Doppler observa-
like anything seen before. The one around 51 Pegasi is the oddest of the tions. One possible way to broaden the search is to look at gravitational
bunch. Its mass is at least half that of Jupiter, and yet it orbits just seven lensing, a process whereby the gravity of an intervening star temporarily
million kilometers from the parent star—less than one eighth Mercury’s dis- magnifies the light from a more distant one. If the lensing star has planets,
tance from the sun. At such proximity, the planet’s surface would be baked they could produce additional, short-lived brightenings. Many stars can be
to a theoretical temperature of 1,300 degrees Celsius. The planet’s orbital monitored at once, so this approach could yield statistics on the abundance
period, or year, is just 4.2 days. of planets. Unfortunately, it cannot be used to detect planets around near-
One of the planets found by Marcy and Butler orbits the star 47 Ursae Ma- by stars.
joris; this body has somewhat less extreme attributes. Its three-year orbit Another possibility involves searching directly for the radiation reflected
takes it on a circular course about 300 million kilometers from its star (cor- by large planets around other stars. Normally, Earth’s atmosphere would
responding to an orbit between Mars and Jupiter), and its mass is at mini- hopelessly blur together star and planet. Adaptive optics—a means for can-
perature, atmospheric pressure and within a billion years of Earth’s forma- oxygen in a planet’s atmosphere is the
chemical composition. tion, as soon as the heavy bombard- first indicator that some form of car-
The vital signs easiest to spot with ment by asteroids ceased, primitive or- bon-based life may exist there.
spectroscopy are radio signals designed ganisms such as bacteria and algae had Oxygen leaves an unmistakable mark
by extraterrestrials for interstellar com- spread around most of the globe. These on the radiation emitted by a planet.
munication. Such transmissions would organisms represented the totality of For example, some of the sunlight that
be totally unlike natural phenomena; life here for the next two billion years; reaches Earth’s surface is reflected
such unexpected features are examples consequently, if life exists on other through the atmosphere back toward
of the kind of beacons that we must planets, it might well be in this highly space. Oxygen in the atmosphere ab-
look for to locate intelligent life else- uncommunicative form. sorbs some of this radiation, and thus
where. Yet sensitive scans of faraway an observer of Earth using spectroscopy
star systems have not come across any Algae and the Atmosphere to study the reflected sunlight could pick
signals, indicating only that extraterres- out the distinctive signature associated
trials bent on interstellar radio commu-
nication are uncommon.
But planets may be home to noncom-
E arth’s humble blue-green algae do
not operate radio transmitters, but
they are chemical engineers par excel-
with oxygen.
In 1980 Toby C. Owen, then at the
State University of New York at Stony
municating life-forms, so we need to be lence. As algae became more wide- Brook, suggested looking for oxygen’s
able to find evidence of even the sim- spread, they began adding large quanti- signal in the visible red light reflected
plest organisms. To expand our capacity ties of oxygen to the atmosphere. The by planets, as a sign of life there. Closer
to locate distant planets and determine production of oxygen is fundamental to to home, Sagan reported in 1993 that
whether these worlds are inhabited, we carbon-based life: the simplest organ- the Galileo space probe recorded the
have proposed a powerful and novel isms take in water, nitrogen and carbon distinctive spectrum of oxygen in the
successor to Galileo’s telescope that will, dioxide as nutrients and then release red region of visible light coming from
we believe, enable us to detect life on oxygen into the atmosphere as waste. Earth. Indeed, this indication of life’s
other planets. Oxygen is a chemically reactive gas; existence has been radiating a recogniz-
The simplest forms of life on our without continued replenishment by al- able signal into space for at least the
planet altered the conditions on Earth gae and, later in Earth’s evolution, by past 500 million years.
in ways that a distant observer could plants, its concentration would fall. Of course, there could be some non-
perceive. The fossil records indicate that Thus, the presence of large amounts of biological source of oxygen on a planet
INNER SOLAR SYSTEM
MERCURY VENUS EARTH MARS
51 PEGASI SYSTEM
AT LEAST 0.5 TIMES

THE MASS OF JUPITER
70 VIRGINIS SYSTEM
AT LEAST 6.5 TIMES

THE MASS OF JUPITER
47 URSAE MAJORIS SYSTEM
AT LEAST 2.3 TIMES
MICHAEL GOODMAN
THE MASS OF JUPITER
MILLIONS OF KILOMETERS 150 300
celing out atmospheric distortion—may offer a way to overcome this The newfound planets represent only the tip of the iceberg. Continued
problem. In theory, an adaptive optics system conceived by J. Roger P. observations, careful data analysis—and innovative technologies, such
Angel and refined by David Sandler and Steve Stahl of Thermotrex Corpo- as a space-based interferometer—will soon yield many more such dis-
ration in San Diego could capture an image of a large planet at Jupiter’s coveries, giving us a better sense of the true variety of worlds out there.
orbital distance in a single night of observation. —Corey S. Powell, staff writer
without life, so this possibility must al- We can easily estimate the “Goldi-
ways be explored. In addition, life could locks orbit”—the distance at which CO2
be based on some other brand of chem- conditions are “just right” to generate
istry that does not produce oxygen as and sustain life as it exists on Earth. For
carbon-based life does. But compelling a large, hot star, 25 times as bright as VENUS
reasons lead us to expect that life on our sun, a hypothetical Earth-like plan-
other planets would have a chemistry et would lie at about the distance that
similar to our own. Carbon is particu- Jupiter circles the sun. For a small, cool
larly suitable as a building block of life: star, one tenth as bright as the sun, the
it is abundant in the universe, and no planet’s orbit would resemble Mercury’s H2O CO2
other known element can form the course.
myriad of complex but stable molecules But proper location means little if a
necessary for life as we know it. planet’s pull of gravity cannot hold on O3
to oceans and an atmosphere. If distance
EARTH
Searching for Another Earth from a star were the only factor to con-
sider, Earth’s moon would have liquid
O ur water-rich planet is obviously

favorable to life. Water provides a
solvent for the biochemical reactions of INFRARED SIGNATURE OF LIFE can
CO2
life to take place and serves as a source be seen only on Earth: although Venus,
of needed hydrogen for living matter. Earth and Mars all have atmospheres rich MARS
Planets similar to Earth in size and dis- in carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), only Earth car-
tance from their sun represent the most ries abundant water (H 2O) and ozone
(O 3), a form of oxygen usually found high
plausible homes for carbon-based life in
MICHAEL GOODMAN
in the atmosphere. Water is a vital ingre-

other solar systems, primarily because dient needed to sustain carbon-based life;
liquid water could exist on these worlds. oxygen is a sign of its presence. Infrared 8 10 14 20
A planet’s distance from its star deter- radiation emitted from planets in distant
mines its temperature—whether it will solar systems might reveal other worlds WAVELENGTH (MICRONS)
be too hot or too cold for liquid water. similar to our own. SOURCE: R. Hanel, Goddard Space Flight Center
Faced with this quandary, in 1986 we
proposed, along with Andrew Y. S.
Cheng, now at the University of Hong
Kong, that monitoring the mid-infrared
wavelengths (longer than visible red
wavelengths) emitted by a planet would
PLANET be a better method for finding planets
and looking for extraterrestrial life. This
STAR type of radiation—really the planet’s ra-
OBSCURED
diated heat—has a wavelength 10 to 20
times longer than that of visible light. At
these wavelengths, a planet emits about
40 times as many photons—particles of
light—as it does at shorter wavelengths,
and the nearby star would outshine the
planet “only” 10 million times, a ratio
1,000 times more favorable than that
which red light offers.
MIRROR MIRROR Moreover, three compounds that
should appear together on inhabited
WAVEFORM INVERTED
planets—ozone (a form of oxygen usu-
ally located high in the atmosphere),
carbon dioxide and water—are easily
MICHAEL GOODMAN
recognizable by examining the infrared

spectrum. Once again, our solar system
provides promising support for this
technique: a survey of the infrared emis-
CANCELING STARLIGHT enables astronomers to see dim planets typically ob- sions of local planets reveals that only
scured by stellar radiance. Two telescopes focused on the same star (top) can cancel
Earth displays the infrared signature of
out much of its light: one telescope inverts the light—making peaks into troughs and
vice versa (right ). When the inverted light is combined with the noninverted starlight life [see lower illustration on preceding
from the second telescope (left), the light waves interfere with one another, and the im- page]. Although Earth, Mars and Ve-
age of the star vanishes (center). nus all have atmospheres with carbon
dioxide, only Earth shows the signature
of plentiful water and ozone.
water. But gravity depends on the size reveal only a body’s mass and position; What kind of telescope do we need
and density of the body: because the ascertaining whether it carries inhabi- to locate Earth-like planets and pick up
moon is smaller and less dense than tants remains impossible. their infrared emissions? Some of to-
Earth, its pull of gravity is much weak- day’s ground-based telescopes can de-
er. Any water or layers of atmosphere Seeing Infrared tect the strong infrared radiation ema-
that might develop on or around such a nating from stars. But the heat emitted
body would quickly be lost to space.
Conversely, a very large planet, which
has a strong pull of gravity, will attract
C learly, we need a different technique
to reveal characteristics as specific
as what chemicals can be found on a
by our atmosphere and by the telescope
itself would completely swamp any sign
of a planet. Even Antarctica is not near-
gases from space. Scientists believe that planet. Previously we mentioned that ly cold enough to enable us to pick out
Jupiter developed this way, gradually the visible radiation coming from a plan- such a faint image: the telescope must
accumulating a huge outer shell of hy- et can confirm the presence of certain be cooled to at least minus 225 degrees
drogen and helium. Life as we know it molecules, in particular oxygen, that we Celsius (about 50 kelvins). More trou-
seems unlikely to exist on massive gase- know support life. But distinguishing blesome, radiation passing through
ous planets like Jupiter. faint oxygen signals in light reflected by Earth’s atmosphere is imprinted with
Although we have a fairly specific de- a small planet around even a star in our exactly the features of ozone, carbon
scription of the kind of planet that own sun’s neighborhood would be ex- dioxide and water we hope to find on
might be hospitable to life, finding any traordinarily difficult. another planet. Obviously, we reasoned,
object orbiting distant stars has proved For example, the glow from a distant we must move the telescope into space.
daunting. Currently the best methods planet’s sun would outshine the planet Even then, to distinguish a planet’s
for detecting such bodies actually in- by a factor of 10 billion. So hunting for radiation from that of its star, a tradi-
volve looking not at the planets them- planets can be as challenging as trying tional telescope would have to be much
selves but at their stars. Astronomers to pick out a glowworm sitting next to larger than any ground-based or orbit-
watch for slight variations in a star’s or- a searchlight, both of which are thou- ing telescope built to date. Because light
bit or light emission that can be ex- sands of kilometers away. Even if we cannot be focused to a spot smaller than
plained only by the presence of planets. could pick out the light reflected by a its wavelength, light from a distant point
Unfortunately, indirect observation of planet, any oxygen features in its visible in the sky can at best be focused to a
planets tells us little about their charac- spectrum would be weak and remark- fuzzy core surrounded by a faint halo;
teristics. Indeed, all indirect techniques ably hard to spot. even a perfect telescope mirror cannot
TARGET STAR
form perfect images. If the halo sur-
rounding the star extends beyond the TELESCOPES TELESCOPES
planet’s orbit, then we cannot discern
the much dimmer body of the planet in-
side it. By making a telescope mirror and
the resulting image very large, we can,
in principle, make the image of a star as
MICHAEL GOODMAN
sharp as desired, but the size of the
equipment needed to achieve such reso-
AXIS OF ROTATION
lution renders the project infeasible.
We can predict the performance of ROTATING INTERFEROMETER could
telescopes and thus know in advance reveal the existence of a planet around a a
what kind of image quality we can ex- distant star. The four telescopes arranged
pect. For example, to monitor the in- as shown above in the authors’ proposed
frared spectrum of an Earth-like planet instrument would produce a composite
circling, say, a star 30 light-years away, view of the sky partially darkened by nu-
we would need an enormous space tele- merous bands; the star to be obscured
would be hidden by one strip. As the in-
scope, close to 60 meters in diameter.
strument rotates about the line connect-
With current technology, the cost of ing the center of the device with the star,
STAR IN PLANET IN
DARK BAND DARK BAND
such an instrument would rival the na- the dark bands will also rotate. A nearby
tional debt. And even telescope enthusi- planet would pass in and out of the bands
asts such as ourselves regard the size of (panels a–c). Scientists could then ana-
this device as daunting. lyze the pattern of blinking to determine
how far the planet is from its star.
Rethinking the Telescope
b
T o develop a more reasonably sized

telescope that would allow us to lo-
cate small, perhaps habitable, planets,
reveals details about the source of light
by employing the interference of light
waves.
we knew we would have to play some The interferometer designed by Brace-
tricks with our instruments. One useful well can obscure a star only if the star is
stratagem had been suggested 23 years perpendicular to the line joining the cen- STAR
ago by Ronald N. Bracewell of Stanford ters of each telescope. With such an ar-
University. He showed how two small rangement, both telescopes receive ex- PLANET
telescopes could be adapted to search actly the same pattern of light waves VISIBLE
for large, cool planets similar to Jupiter. from the star. If we sweep the instru-
The instrument he proposed consisted of ment through the sky, stars will appear
two one-meter telescopes separated by to blink as they move in and out of
20 meters. Each telescope alone would alignment.
have yielded blurred pictures that would A planet separated from its star by
never have enabled Bracewell to resolve even a fairly small distance, however, c
the faint images of planets. But together will not be aligned with the device when
the two devices could be arranged to its star is brought into alignment. The
observe distant worlds. two telescopes will register the planet’s
If he focused both telescopes on the signal at slightly different times, so the
same star, Bracewell envisaged that he light waves from the planet will not
would be able to invert the light waves cancel one another out. If light shines STAR
PLANET
from one telescope, flipping peaks into through the interferometer after we have
troughs and vice versa. Then he would canceled out the star’s image, we know
combine the inverted light with light that some additional source of infrared
from the second telescope. Because the radiation—perhaps a planet—exists
MICHAEL GOODMAN
first image would be the reverse of the near the star. We can analyze this signal
second, when Bracewell combined the by rotating the interferometer about the
two so that they overlapped precisely, line joining the instrument and the star.
the light from the star—both the core The image will change intensity as the
and the surrounding halo—would be device rotates; planets should display a ering light from a nearby star; it would
canceled out. (The light would not dis- recognizable pattern of variation [see il- instead be the heat radiated by dust
appear, of course; energy must be con- lustration on this page]. particles in our solar system, referred to
served. Instead the light from the star After working out the design for this as zodiacal glow. The faint signal from
would be diverted to a separate part of interferometer, Bracewell realized that a distant planet would be almost imper-
the telescope.) Scientists refer to this type the main obstacle to locating a Jupiter- ceptible against the background glare.
of device as an interferometer because it like planet would not be the overpow- Any hope of discovering a planet would
require averaging data for at least one ods for discovering planets around oth- it can be made rather long, roughly 50
month to see through this glowing er stars. We assembled a team that in- to 75 meters in length. The size of the
background. cluded Bracewell, Léger and his col- instrument offers an important advan-
In addition, we found that when we league Jean-Marie Mariotti of the Paris tage: with this arrangement, the signals
tried to adapt Bracewell’s design to hunt Observatory, as well as some 20 other from planets are complex and unique.
for planets smaller than Jupiter that or- scientists and engineers. In particular, With the proper analysis, we can use the
bit closer to a sun, a problem arose. No the two of us at the University of Ari- data from the interferometer to recon-
interferometer can perfectly cancel out zona have been studying the potential struct an image of a distant solar system
starlight—the area darkened is rather of a new approach. We have designed [see illustration on this page]. As we
small, light from the star always leaks envision the orbiting interferometer, it
around the edges, and any excess would point to a different star each
light presents a significant obstacle day but could return to interesting sys-
when we try to see extremely dim, tems for more extensive observations.
small planets such as Earth. If pointed at our own solar system
To tackle these restrictions, a num- from a nearby star, the interferometer
ber of researchers, including the two could pick out Venus, Earth, Mars, Ju-
of us, have been working on alterna- piter and Saturn. And the data could
tive strategies. In 1990 one of us (An- be analyzed to determine the chemical
gel) suggested that arranging four composition of each planet’s atmo-
mirrors in a diamond pattern allows sphere. From our solar system, the de-
better cancellation of starlight. But to vice could easily study the newly dis-
suppress the background glare of zo- covered planet around 47 Ursae Ma-
diacal light, each telescope would joris. More important, this
have to be eight meters in diameter. interferometer could identify Earth-
Alain Léger and his collaborators at like planets elsewhere that would oth-
the University of Paris then suggested erwise elude us, and the device can
the first practical solution to this check all these planets for the presence
complication. They proposed placing of carbon dioxide, water and ozone.
the device in orbit around the sun, at UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA OASES PROJECT
Building such an instrument would
about the distance of Jupiter’s orbit, be a substantial undertaking, perhaps
which would naturally cool the tele- IMAGE OF DISTANT PLANETS, creat- an international project, and many of
scopes to an appropriate temperature ed from simulated interferometer signals, the details have yet to be completely
indicates what astronomers might reason-
and would minimize background worked out. We estimate that the
ably expect to see with a space-based tele-
glare from zodiacal light. Because of scope. This study displays a system about proposed interferometer will cost less
the decrease in background glare, the 30 light-years away, with four planets than $2 billion—about 10 percent of
orbiting interferometer could be rela- roughly equivalent in luminosity to Earth. nasa’s budget for space science re-
tively small: a sensitive instrument (Each planet appears twice, mirrored search over the next decade. The dis-
could be built with four individual across the star.) With this sensitivity, the covery of life on another planet may
telescopes as small as one meter in di- authors speculate that the instrument arguably be the crowning achieve-
ameter. The instrument has one signifi- could easily examine the planet recently ment in the exploration of space. Find-
cant drawback, however. Because it is found orbiting 47 Ursae Majoris. ing life elsewhere, nasa administrator
so effective at canceling out a star’s light, Daniel S. Goldin has said, “would
the device can sometimes conceal a an interferometer with two pairs of change everything—no human endeav-
nearby planet as well. mirrors all arranged in a straight line. or or thought would be unchanged by
Here the matter rested until 1995, Each pair of mirrors will darken the that discovery.”
when the National Aeronautics and star’s main image, but significantly, each Remarkably, the technology to assist
Space Administration solicited from re- pair will also cancel the starlight leak of in this discovery is at our fingertips.
searchers a road map for the exploration the other pair. Soon we should be able to answer the
of other solar systems. nasa selected It turns out that because this interfer- centuries-old question, “Is life on Earth
three teams to investigate various meth- ometer cancels starlight very effectively, alone in the universe?”
The Authors Further Reading

J. ROGER P. ANGEL and NEVILLE J. WOOLF have collaborated A Space Telescope for Infrared Spectroscopy of Earth-
for the past 15 years on methods for making better telescopes. They are like Planets. J.R.P. Angel, A.Y.S. Cheng and N. J. Woolf in
based at Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona. Angel is a Nature, Vol. 322, pages 341–343; July 24, 1986.
fellow of the Royal Society and directs the Steward Observatory Mir- Use of a 16 Meter Telescope to Detect Earthlike Plan-
ror Laboratory. Woolf has pioneered techniques to minimize the distor- ets. J. Roger P. Angel in The Next Generation Space Telescope.
tion of images caused by the atmosphere. Angel and Woolf consider the Edited by P. Bely and C. J. Burrows. Space Telescope Science In-
quest for distant planets to be the ultimate test for telescope builders; stitute, Baltimore, 1990.
they are meeting this challenge by pushing the limits of outer-space ob- Life in the Universe. Special issue of Scientific American, Vol.
servation technology, such as adaptive optics and space telescopes. 271, No. 4; October 1994.
originally published December 1997
The Case for Relic

Life on Mars
A meteorite found in Antarctica offers
strong evidence that Mars has had—
and may still have—microbial life
by Everett K. Gibson, Jr., David S. McKay,

Kathie Thomas-Keprta and
Christopher S. Romanek
METEORITE TIMELINE begins

with the crystallization of the rock on
the surface of Mars, during the first 1 per-
cent of the planet’s history. Less than a bil-
lion years later the rock was shocked and frac-
tured by meteoritic collisions. Some time after
these impacts, a water-rich fluid flowed through
the fractures, and tiny globules of carbonate min-
erals formed in them. At the same time, molecular
by-products, such as hydrocarbons, of the decay
of living organisms were deposited in or near the
globules by that fluid. Impacts on the surface of
Mars continued to shock the rock, fracturing the
globules, before a powerful collision ejected the
rock into space. After falling to Earth, the mete-
orite lay in the Antarctic for millennia before it
was found and its momentous history revealed.
1984
O
METEORITE COLLECTED
f all the scientific subjects that have seized
IN ANTARCTICA
the public psyche, few have held on as
tightly as the idea of life on Mars. Starting
not long after the invention of the telescope and continuing for 1993
a good part of the past three centuries, the subject has inspired innu-
merable studies, ranging from the scientific to the speculative. But com-
mon to them all was recognition of the fact that in our solar system, if a planet
other than Earth harbors life, it is almost certainly Mars.
Interest in Martian life has tended to coincide with new discoveries about the myste-
rious red world. Historically, these discoveries have often occurred after one of the pe- SAMPLE ALH84001
riodic close approaches between the two planets. Every 15 years, Mars comes within IDENTIFIED AS
about 56 million kilometers of Earth (the next approach will occur in the summer of METEORITE FROM MARS
2003). Typically, life on Mars was assumed to be as intelligent and sophisticated as that
of Homo sapiens, if not more so. (Even less explicably, Martian beings have been pop- 1996
ularly portrayed as green and diminutive.)
It was after one of the close approaches in the late 19th century that Italian as-
tronomer Giovanni V. Schiaparelli announced that he had seen great lines stretching
across the planet’s surface, which he called canali. At the turn of the century, U.S. as-
tronomer Percival Lowell insisted that the features were canals constructed by an ad-
vanced civilization. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, any lingering theories about the
lines and elaborate civilizations were put to rest after the U.S. and the Soviet Union sent
the first space probes to the planet. The orbiters showed that there were in fact no
canals, although there were long, huge canyons. Within a decade, landers found no ev-
PHOTOGRAPHS BY NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER; DIGITAL COMPOSITION BY JENNIFER C. CHRISTIANSEN
idence of life, let alone intelligent life and civilization.

Although the debate about intelligent life was essentially over, the discussions about
microbial life on the planet—particularly life that may have existed on the warmer, wet-
ter Mars of billions of years ago—were just beginning. In August 1996 this subject was
thrust into the spotlight when we and a number of our colleagues at the National Aero-
nautics and Space Administration Johnson Space Center and at Stanford University an-
nounced that unusual characteristics in a meteorite known to have come from Mars
could most reasonably be interpreted as the vestiges of ancient Martian bacterial life.
The 1.9-kilogram, potato-sized meteorite, designated ALH84001, had been found in
Antarctica in 1984.
Our theory was by no means universally embraced. Some researchers insisted that
there were nonbiological explanations for the meteorite’s peculiarities and that these ra-
tionales were more plausible than our biological explanation. We remain convinced
that the facts and analyses that we will outline in this article point to the existence of a
The Search for Alien Life COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
primitive form of life. Moreover, such Although the landers found no evi- lyzed; however, its distribution of oxygen
life-forms may still exist on Mars if, as dence of life on present-day Mars, pho- isotopes, minerology and other charac-
some researchers have theorized, pore tographs of the planet taken from orbit teristics place it in the same group with
spaces and cracks in rocks below the by the Viking craft, as well as earlier the other five Martian rocks.
surface of the planet contain liquid wa- images made by the Mariner 9 probe, The distribution of oxygen isotopes
ter. Why should researchers even care strongly suggest that great volumes of within a group of meteorites has been
about the possible existence of such a water had sculpted the planet’s surface the most convincing piece of evidence
simple form of life billions of years ago a few billion years ago and perhaps as establishing that the rocks—including
on the red planet? Certainly, the preva- recently as several hundred million years ALH84001—come from Mars. In the
lence of life in the universe is among the ago [see “Global Climatic Change on early 1970s Robert N. Clayton and his
most profound scientific questions. Yet Mars,” by Jeffrey S. Kargel and Robert co-workers at the University of Chicago
almost no hard data exist that can be G. Strom; Scientific American, No- showed that the isotopes oxygen 16,
used to theorize on that issue. vember 1996]. oxygen 17 and oxygen 18 in the silicate
Confirmation that primitive life once In addition, various meteorites found materials within various types of mete-
flourished on Mars would be extremely on Earth and known to be of Martian orites have unique relative abundances.
useful to those studying the range of origin—including ALH84001 itself—of- The finding was significant because it
conditions under which a planet can fer tangible proof of Mars’s watery past demonstrates that the bodies of our so-
generate the complex chemistry from because they show unambiguous signs lar system formed from distinct regions
which life evolves. Then, too, the infor- of having been altered by water. Specif- of the solar nebula and thus have unique
mation could help us understand the ically, some of these meteorites have oxygen isotopic compositions. Using this
origin of life on Earth. Ultimately, these been found to contain carbonates, sul- isotopic “fingerprint,” Clayton helped
kinds of insights could elucidate vari- fates, hydrates and clays, which can be to show that a group of 12 meteorites,
ous hypotheses—which are currently formed, so far as planetary scientists including ALH84001, are indeed close-
little more than guesses—about how know, only when water comes into con- ly related. The combination of trapped
common life is in the universe. tact with other minerals in the rock. Martian atmospheric gases and the
Of course, the entire argument hinges specific distribution of oxygen isotopes
Inhospitable Planet on ALH84001’s having come from the has led researchers to conclude that the
red planet. Of this, at least, we can be meteorites must have come from Mars.
C onditions on Mars today are not

hospitable to life as we know it.
The planet’s atmosphere consists of 95
certain. It is one of several meteorites
found since the mid-1970s in meteor-
ite-rich regions in Antarctica [see box
Invader from Mars
percent carbon dioxide, 2.7 percent ni-

trogen, 1.6 percent argon and only trace
amounts of oxygen and water vapor.
on next two pages]. In the early 1980s
Donald D. Bogard and Pratt Johnson of
the NASA Johnson Space Center began
O ther analyses, mainly of radioiso-
topes, have enabled researchers to
outline ALH84001’s history from its
Surface pressure is less than 1 percent studying a group of meteorites found to origins on the red planet to the present
of Earth’s, and daily temperatures rarely contain minute bubbles of gas trapped day. The three key time periods of inter-
exceed zero degrees Celsius, even in the within glass inside the rock. est are the age of the rock (the length of
planet’s warmest regions in the summer. The glass is believed to have formed time since it crystallized on Mars), how
Most important, one of life’s most fun- during impacts with meteoroids or long the meteorite traveled in space and
damental necessities, liquid water, seems comets while the rock was on the sur- how long it has been on Earth. Analysis
not to exist on the planet’s surface. face of Mars. Some of these glass-proof three different sets of radioactive iso-
Given these realities, it is perhaps not ducing impacts apparently imparted topes in the meteorite have established
surprising that the two Viking space enough energy to eject fragments out each of these time periods.
probes that settled on the planet’s sur- into space; from there, some of these The length of time since the rock soli-
face, in July and September of 1976, rocks were captured by Earth’s gravita- dified from molten materials—the so-
failed to find any evidence of life. The tional field. This impact scenario is the called crystallization age of the materi-
results cast doubt on—but did not com- only one that planetary scientists be- al—has been determined through the
pletely rule out—the possibility that there lieve can account for the existence on use of three different dating techniques.
is life on Mars. The landers, which were our world of bits of Mars. One uses isotopes of rubidium and
equipped to detect organic compounds Bogard and Johnson found that the strontium, another, neodymium and sa-
at a sensitivity level of one part per bil- tiny samples of gas trapped in the glass marium, and the third, argon. All three
lion, found none, either at the surface of some of the meteorites had the exact methods indicated that the rock is 4.5
or in the soil several centimeters down. chemical and isotopic compositions as billion years old. By geologic standards
Similarly, three other experiments found gases in the atmosphere of Mars, which the rock is extremely old; the 4.5-bil-
no evidence of microbial organisms. Ul- had been measured by the Viking lan- lion-year figure means that it crystallized
timately, researchers concluded that the ders in 1976. The one-to-one correlation within the first 1 percent of Mars’s his-
possibility of life on Mars was quite between the two gas samples—over a tory. In comparison, the other 11 Mar-
low and that a more definite statement range of nine orders of magnitude— tian meteorites that have been analyzed
on the issue would have to await the strongly suggests that these meteorites are all between 1.3 billion years old and
analysis of more samples by future lan- are from Mars. In all, five meteorites 165 million years old.
ders—and, it was hoped, the return of have been shown to contain samples of It is remarkable that a rock so old,
some samples from the red planet for trapped Martian atmosphere. ALH- and so little altered on Mars or during
detailed study on Earth. 84001 was not among the five so ana- its residence in the Antarctic ice, be-
came available for scientists to study. ing was that ALH84001 fell from space ment of unique features that led us to
The duration of the meteorite’s space 13,000 years ago. hypothesize that microbial organisms
odyssey was determined through the From the very moment it was discov- came into contact with the rock in the
analysis of still other isotopes, namely ered, the meteorite now known as ALH- distant past. Basically, the case for an-
helium 3, neon 21 and argon 38. While 84001 proved unusual and intriguing. cient microbial life on Mars is built al-
a meteorite is in space, it is bombarded In 1984 U.S. geologist Roberta Score most entirely around the globules.
by cosmic rays and other high-energy found the meteorite in the Far Western Individually, none of the features we
particles. The particles interact with the Icefield of the Allan Hills Region. Score found are strongly indicative of life.
nuclei of certain atoms in the meteorite, recognized that the rock was unique be- Collectively, however—and especially
producing the three isotopes listed cause of its pale greenish-gray color. within the confines of the tiny discoids—
above. By studying the abundances and The sample turned out to consist of 98 the globules can be plausibly explained
production rates of these cosmogenical- percent coarse-grained orthopyroxene as the ancient vestiges of microbial life.
ly produced isotopes, scientists can de- [(Mg,Fe)SiO3], a silicate mineral. There The features fall into several categories
termine how long the meteorite was ex- are also relatively minor amounts of of evidence. One category centers on the
posed to the high-energy flux and, feldspathic glass, which is also known presence of tiny iron oxides and iron
therefore, how long the specimen was as maskelynite (NaAlSi3O8), olivine sulfide grains, which resemble those
in space. Using this approach, research- [(Mg,Fe)2SiO4], chromite (FeCr2O4) and formed by terrestrial bacteria. The sec-
ers concluded that after being torn free pyrite (FeS2) as well as carbonate phas- ond group revolves around the presence
from the planet, ALH84001 spent 16 es and phyllosilicates. of organic carbon molecules in and on
million years in space before falling in the globules. Finally, unusual structures
the Antarctic. Carbonates Are Key found within the globules bear a striking
To determine how long the meteorite resemblance to bacteria fossils found on
lay in the Antarctic ice, A. J. Timothy
Jull of the University of Arizona used
carbon 14 dating. When silicates are
T he most interesting aspect of ALH-
84001 are the carbonates, which
exist as tiny discoids, like flattened
Earth. Another relevant piece of evi-
dence suggests the globules formed from
a water-rich fluid below 100 degrees C.
exposed to cosmic rays in space, carbon spheres, 20 to 250 microns in diameter. NASA Johnson Space Center research-
14 is produced. In time, the rates of pro- They cover the walls of cracks in the ers, along with Monica Grady of the
duction and decay of carbon 14 balance, meteorite and are oriented in such a British Museum of Natural History and
and the meteorite becomes saturated way that they are flattened against the workers at the Open University in the
with the isotope. The balance is upset inside walls of the fractures [see illustra- U.K., performed the first isotopic analy-
when the meteorite falls from space and tion on page 60]. The globules were ap- sis of carbon and oxygen in the carbon-
production of carbon 14 ceases. The parently deposited from a fluid saturat- ate globules. The carbon analysis indi-
decay goes on, however, reducing the ed with carbon dioxide that percolated cates that the globules have more car-
amount in the rock by one half every through the fracture after the silicates bon 13 than any carbonates found on
5,700 years. By determining the differ- were formed. None of the other 11 me- Earth but just the right amount to have
ence between the saturation level and teorites known to have come from Mars come from Mars.
the amount measured in the silicates, have such globules. Most carbon on Earth is made up of
researchers can determine how long the It was within the carbonate globules 98.9 percent carbon 12 and 1.1 percent
meteorite has been on Earth. Jull’s find- that our research team found the assort- carbon 13. Various reactions, however,
The Budget Space Probe

EXPOSED
SNOWFALL BURIED METEORITE
METEORITE
METEORITE
WIND FLOW
MOUNTAIN
EROSION
BLUE ICE ICE FLOW SURFACE
LAURIE GRACE
BEDROCK
A combination of geologic and meteorological phenomena gather meteorites, they will in time become exposed near the mountain. The reason is
orites at the bases of Antarctica’s mountains. After landing, the meteorites that the winds slowly but continuously “ablate” the ice above the mete-
become buried in compressed snow, which eventually becomes ice. orites, turning it into a gas. Ablation exposes areas of ice that had been
Sheets of ice move toward the edges of the continent, carrying the mete- buried deep under the surface, so meteorites are found on ice that is gen-
orites with them. If a mountain blocks horizontal movement of the mete- erally more than 10,000 years old and is bluish in color.
NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER
SEGMENTED OBJECT (above, left) is 380 nanometers in length and was found in a carbonate globule in meteorite ALH84001.
The minute structure resembles fossilized bacteria, or microfossils, found on Earth. For example, the vertically oriented object to the
right in the right-hand photograph is believed to be a microfossil. The object, which is also 380 nanometers long, was found 400
meters below Earth’s surface (in Washington State) in a type of geologic formation known as Columbia River Basalt.
can alter this ratio. For example, in gen- whether the carbonates were formed at odds with a growing body of evidence
eral a sample of carbon that has been a temperatures that could support micro- that the globules formed at relatively
part of an organic chemical system— bial life, because terrestrial organisms low temperatures.
say, in plant matter—is somewhat more do not survive at temperatures above We are extremely interested in the
enriched in carbon 12, whereas carbon about 115 degrees C. The NASA-U.K. age of the carbonates, because it would
in limestone is relatively enriched in team analyzed the oxygen isotopes in allow us to estimate when microbial life
carbon 13. The carbon in the globules the carbonate globules. Those findings left its mark on the rock that became
of ALH84001 is more enriched in car- strongly suggest that the globules formed ALH84001. Yet all we can say for sure
bon 13 than any natural materials on at temperatures no higher than 100 de- is that the carbonates crystallized in the
Earth. Moreover, the enrichment is dif- grees C. Earlier this year John W. Valley fractures in the meteorite some time af-
ferent from that of the other 11 Mar- of the University of Wisconsin–Madi- ter the rock itself crystallized. Various
tian meteorites. This fact suggests that son used an ion microprobe technique research groups have come up with ages
the carbon in the globules—unlike the to confirm our finding. ranging from 1.3 to 3.6 billion years;
trace amounts of carbon seen in the It should be noted that another re- the data gathered so far, however, are
other Martian meteorites—may have search group, led by Ralph P. Harvey of insufficient to date the carbonate glob-
been derived from Mars’s atmosphere. Case Western Reserve University, has ules conclusively.
Analysis of the distribution of oxygen analyzed the chemical composition of
isotopes in the carbonates can provide the minerals in the carbonates with an Biomineral Clues
information about the temperature at electron microprobe and concluded that
which those minerals formed. The sub-
ject bears directly on the question of
the carbonates formed at 700 degrees
C. In our view, Harvey’s findings are at T he first category of evidence in-
volves certain minerals found in-
I n 1969 a team of Japanese glaciologists working near the Yamato

Mountains in Antarctica discovered eight meteorites in an ice field
known to be more than 10,000 years old. The discovery was remarkable
ice per year. As ice is removed, the meteorites within are exposed on the
surface of the ice sheet. The end result is that meteorites are continuous-
ly accumulating and being exhumed at the base of Antarctica’s moun-
because the meteorites were of four different types, indicating that they tains. Because ablation exposes areas of ice that had been buried deep
could not have all fallen at the same time, as fragments of the same mete- under the firn, the meteorites are always found on regions of old, bluish
orite. It did not take glaciologists long to figure out how ice flows consoli- ice. Nowhere else in the world does this marvelous concentration mecha-
date the rocks. Meteorites landing on the Antarctic ice become buried in nism occur. Only the Antarctic has the necessary combination of moving
compressed snow, called firn, which in time becomes ice. This ice eventu- glaciers and mountainous barriers.
ally becomes “old” ice, which is bluish in color. Over the past 28 years, scientific teams have recovered more than
Propelled by gravity, masses of ice move at a rate of about two to three 17,000 meteorites. The vast majority of samples came from the asteroid
meters a year from the relatively lofty interior of the Antarctic continent to belt, but the Antarctic harvest has also yielded 14 samples from the moon
the edges (left). If an obstacle such as a mountain range impedes the flow and six from Mars.
of ice, the ice mass pushes upward against the barrier. The ice—and the Delivered as they are free of charge, meteorites have been called the
meteorites it contains—can make no more horizontal progress. In the poor man’s space probe. Before the discovery of the Antarctic meteorite
meantime, as the winds blow over it, the surface layer of ice is slowly re- cache, the world’s meteorite collections had only between 2,000 and
moved by a process known as ablation. Ablation, in which the solid ice 2,500 different specimens.
converts directly to a gas, removes typically two to three centimeters of —E.K.G., D.S.M., K.T.-K. and C.S.R.
side the carbonate globules; the type 84001 is the first proof that such mole- associated with biogenic activity. Close-
and arrangement of the minerals are cules have existed on Mars. up SEM views show that the carbonate
similar, if not identical, to certain bio- On Earth, when living organisms die globules contain ovoid and tube-shaped
minerals found on Earth. Inside, the and decay, they create hydrocarbons as- bodies [see photomicrographs on pre-
globules are rich in magnesite (MgCO3) sociated with coal, peat and petroleum. ceding page]. The objects are around
and siderite (FeCO3) and have small Many of these hydrocarbons belong to 380 nanometers long, which means they
amounts of calcium and manganese car- a class of organic molecules known as could very well be the fossilized remains
bonates. Fine-grained particles of mag- polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons of bacteria. To pack in all the compo-
netite (Fe3O4) and sulfides ranging in (PAHs). There are thousands of differ- nents that are normally required for a
size from 10 to 100 nanometers on a ent PAHs. Their presence in a sample typical terrestrial bacterium to function,
side are present within the carbonate does not in itself demonstrate that bio- sizes larger than 250 nanometers seem
host. The magnetite crystals are cuboid, logical processes occurred. It is the lo- to be required. Additional tubelike
teardrop or irregular in shape. Individ- cation and association of the PAHs in curved structures found in the globules
ual crystals have well-preserved struc- the carbonate globules that make their are 500 to 700 nanometers in length.
tures with little evidence of defects or discovery so interesting.
trace impurities. In ALH84001 the PAHs are always Nanobacteria or Appendages?
An analysis of the samples conducted found in carbonate-rich regions, includ-
with high-resolution transmission elec-
tron microscopy coupled with energy-
dispersive spectroscopy indicates that
ing the globules. In our view, the rela-
tively simple PAHs are the decay prod-
ucts of living organisms that were car-
O ther objects found within ALH-
84001 are close to the lower size
limit for bacteria. These ovoids are only
the size, purity, morphology and crystal ried by a fluid and trapped when the 40 to 80 nanometers long; other, tube-
structures of all these magnetites are globules were formed. In 1996 a team shaped bodies range from 30 to 170
typical of magnetites produced by bac- at the Open University showed that the nanometers in length and 20 to 40
teria on Earth. carbon in the globules in ALH84001 nanometers in diameter. These sizes are
Terrestrial magnetite particles associ- has an isotopic composition suggestive about a factor of 10 smaller than the
ated with fossilized bacteria are known of microbes that used methane as a food terrestrial microbes that are commonly
as magnetofossils. These particles are source. If confirmed, this finding will be recognized as bacteria. Still, typical cells
found in a variety of sediments and soils one of the strongest pieces of evidence often have appendages that are general-
and are classified, according to size, as to date that the rock bears the imprint ly quite small—in fact about the same
superparamagnetic (less than 20 nano- of biological activity. size as these features observed within
meters on an edge) or single-domain (20 In our 1996 announcement, Richard ALH84001. It may be possible that
to 100 nanometers). The magnetites N. Zare and Simon J. Clemett of Stan- some of the features are fragments or
within ALH84001 are typically 40 to ford used an extremely sensitive analyt- parts of larger units within the sample.
60 nanometers on an edge. ical technique to show that ALH84001 ALH84001’s numerous ovoid and
Single-domain magnetite has been re- contains a relatively small number of elongated features are essentially identi-
ported in ancient terrestrial limestones different PAHs, all of which have been cal in size and morphology to those of
and is generally regarded as having been identified in the decay products of mi- so-called nanobacteria on Earth. So far
produced by bacteria. Most intriguing, crobes. Most important, the PAHs were little study has been devoted to nano-
some of the magnetites in ALH84001 found to be located inside the meteorite, bacteria or bacteria in the 20- to 400-
are arranged in chains, not unlike pearls where contamination is very unlikely to nanometer range. But fossilized bacte-
in a necklace. Terrestrial bacteria often have occurred. This crucial finding sup- ria found within subsurface basalt sam-
produce magnetite in precisely this pat- ports the idea that the carbonates are ples from the Columbia River basin in
tern, because as they biologically pro- Martian and contain the vestiges of an- Washington State [see “Microbes Deep
cess iron and oxygen from the water, cient living organisms. inside the Earth,” by James K.
they produce crystals that naturally PAHs are a component of automobile Fredrickson and Tullis C. Onstott; Sci-
align themselves with the Earth’s mag- exhaust, and they have also been found entific American, October 1996]
netic field. in meteorites, planetary dust particles have features that are essentially identi-
and even in interstellar space. Signifi- cal to some of those observed in the
Organic Carbon Molecules cantly, ultrasensitive analysis of the dis- ovoids in ALH84001.
tribution of the PAHs in ALH84001 in- ALH84001 was present on Mars 4.5
T he presence of organic carbon mol-

ecules in ALH84001 constitutes the
second group of clues. In recent years,
dicated that the PAHs could not have
come from Earth or from an extrater-
restrial source—other than Mars.
billion years ago, when the planet was
wetter, warmer and had a denser atmo-
sphere. Therefore, we might expect to
researchers have found organic mole- Perhaps the most visually compelling see evidence that the rock had been al-
cules not only in Martian meteorites piece of evidence that at least vestiges of tered by contact with water. Yet the
but also in ones known to have come microbes came into contact with the rock rock bears few traces of so-called aque-
from the asteroid belt in interplanetary are objects that appear to be the fos- ous alteration evidence. One such piece
space, which could hardly support life. silized remains of microbes themselves. of evidence would be clay minerals,
Nevertheless, the type and relative abun- Detailed examination of the ALH- which are often produced by aqueous
dance of the specific organic molecules 84001 carbonates using high-resolution reactions. The meteorite does indeed
identified in ALH84001 are suggestive scanning electron microscopy (SEM) contain phyllosilicate clay mineral, but
of life processes. The presence of indig- revealed unusual features that are simi- only in trace amounts. It is not clear,
enous organic molecules within ALH- lar to those seen in terrestrial samples moreover, whether the clay mineral
formed on Mars or in the Antarctic. of water within the pore spaces of a sub- a “sample-return” mission will be
Mars had liquid water on its surface surface reservoir would facilitate their launched to collect Martian rocks and
early in its history and may still have an survival. If the carbonates within ALH- soil robotically and return them to
active groundwater system below the 84001 were formed as early as 3.6 bil- Earth two and a half years later. To take
permafrost or cryosphere. If surface mi- lion years ago and have biological ori- off from the Martian surface for the re-
croorganisms evolved during a period gins, they may be the remnants of the turn to Earth, this revolutionary mis-
when liquid water covered parts of earliest Martian life. sion may use oxygen produced on the
Mars, the microbes might have spread The analyses so far of ALH84001 are Martian surface by breaking down car-
to subsurface environments when con- consistent with the meteorite’s carbon- bon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere.
ditions turned harsh on the surface. The ate globules containing the vestiges of Through projects such as the sample
surface of Mars contains abundant ba- ancient microbial life. Studies of the return, we will finally begin to collect
salts that were undoubtedly fractured meteorite are far from over, however. the kind of data that will enable us to
during the period of early bombard- Whether or not these investigations determine conclusively whether life
ment in the first 600 million years of confirm or modify our hypothesis, they came into being on Mars. This kind of
the planet’s history. These fractures will be invaluable learning experiences insight, in turn, may ultimately provide
could serve as pathways for liquid wa- for researchers, who may get the op- perspective on one of the greatest scien-
ter and could have harbored any biota portunity to put the experience to use tific mysteries: the prevalence of life in
that were adapting to the changing con- in coming years. We hope that in 2005 our universe.
ditions on the planet. The situation has
an analogue on Earth, where thin gaps
NASA JET PROPULSION LABORATORY

between successive lava flows appear to
serve as aquifers for the movement and
containment of groundwater contain-
ing living bacteria.
Organisms may also have developed
at hot springs or in underground hydro-
thermal systems on Mars where chemi-
cal disequilibriums can be maintained
in environments somewhat analogous
to those of the mineral-rich “hot smok-
ers” on the seafloor of Earth.
Thus, it is entirely possible that if or-
ganisms existed on Mars in the distant
past, they may still be there. Availability
WATER FROST, probably only microns

thick, covers parts of red, rocky Martian
soil in a photograph taken by the Viking 2
lander in May 1979. The image was seen
as further evidence that water exists on the
surface of the planet, albeit in solid form.
The Authors Further Reading

EVERETT K. GIBSON, JR., DAVID S. MCKAY, KATHIE Mars. Edited by Hugh H. Kieffer, Bruce M. Jakosky, Conway W.
THOMAS-KEPRTA and CHRISTOPHER S. ROMANEK were Snyder and Mildred S. Matthews. University of Arizona Press, 1992.
members of the team that first reported evidence of past biological What We Have Learned about Mars from SNC Meteorites.
activity within the ALH84001 meteorite. Gibson, McKay and Harry Y. McSween, Jr., in Meteoritics, Vol. 29, No. 6, pages 757–
Thomas-Keprta work at the National Aeronautics and Space Ad- 779; November 1994.
ministration Johnson Space Center in Houston, Tex.; Romanek, a Search for Past Life on Mars: Possible Relic Biogenic Activi-
former National Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the ty in Martian Meteorite ALH84001. David S. McKay et al. in
Johnson center, is with the department of geology and the Savan- Science, Vol. 273, pages 924–930; August 16, 1996.
nah River Ecology Laboratory at the University of Georgia. Gib- Microbes Deep inside the Earth. James K. Fredrickson and Tullis
son, a geochemist and meteorite specialist, and McKay, a geologist C. Onstott in Scientific American, Vol. 275, No. 4, pages 68–73; Oc-
and expert on planetary regoliths, are senior scientists in the John- tober 1996.
son center’s Earth Sciences and Solar System Exploration Division. Water on Mars. Michael H. Carr. Oxford University Press, 1996.
Thomas-Keprta, a senior scientist at Lockheed Martin, is a biolo- Destination Mars: In Art, Myth and Science. Jay Barbree and
gist who applies electron microscopy to the study of meteorites, Martin Caidin, with Susan Wright. Penguin Studio, 1997.
interplanetary dust particles and lunar samples. Romanek’s spe- Information on meteorite ALH84001 and other SNC meteorites is
cialty is low-temperature geochemistry and stable-isotope mass available at http://www-curator.jsc.nasa.gov/curator/antmet/antmet.
spectrometry. Gibson can be reached via [email protected] htm on the World Wide Web.

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COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

THE SEARCH FOR ALIEN LIFE ScientificAmerican.com

8 Is There Life Elsewhere in the Universe?

14 An Ear to the Stars

16 Searching for Life in Our Solar System

21 Searching for Life on Other Planets

28 The Case for Relic Life on Mars

1 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE NOVEMBER 2002

2 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE NOVEMBER 2002

Where They Could Hide

N verifiable alien radio signal. What

4 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE NOVEMBER 2002

between the foundation of a colony and

ciple, this could have happened billions

6 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE NOVEMBER 2002

F urthermore, no matter how peace-

Is There Life Elsewhere

by Jill C. Tarter and Christopher F. Chyba

One of the ongoing searches for

COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

SETI@HOME, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

CELESTIAL LONGITUDE COPYRIGHT 2002 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

Large arrays of small

10 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE NOVEMBER 2002

B y 2050 we will have scoured the surface and

12 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE NOVEMBER 2002

An Ear to the Stars

14 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE NOVEMBER 2002

S ince antiquity, human beings have imagined life

ical reactions to combine gaseous molecules. A more recent

Where Did Life Originate?

T he significance of hydrothermal systems in life’s his-

would have warmed the planet enough to permit liquid water

Microbial Remnants from Mars?

I n 1984, sur veying the Far Western

measuring 20 to 250 microns (millionths of

learly, the key ingredients needed for life have been

20 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SPECIAL ONLINE ISSUE NOVEMBER 2002

Searching for Life

by J. Roger P. Angel and Neville J. Woolf

T he possibility that we are not

MERCURY VENUS EARTH MARS

AT LEAST 0.5 TIMES

AT LEAST 6.5 TIMES

47 URSAE MAJORIS SYSTEM

AT LEAST 2.3 TIMES

MILLIONS OF KILOMETERS 150 300

O ur water-rich planet is obviously

in the atmosphere. Water is a vital ingre-

recognizable by examining the infrared

T o develop a more reasonably sized

The Authors Further Reading

The Case for Relic

by Everett K. Gibson, Jr., David S. McKay,

METEORITE TIMELINE begins

idence of life, let alone intelligent life and civilization.

C onditions on Mars today are not

percent carbon dioxide, 2.7 percent ni-

The Budget Space Probe