Today numerous scientists and serious thinkers are devoted to locating or contacting life in outer space, such as on other planets. The report “The Possibility of Intelligent Life in the Universe” to the United States Congress’ Committee on Science and Technology stated:

“The age-old concept that man is alone in the universe is gradually fading out. . . . Recent estimates by people of some stature suggest a probability of at least one million advanced civilizations in the Milky Way alone. The process has begun to search for methods to contact these other civilizations.”

Why do they feel that there may be other advanced civilizations? Certain scientists reason: ‘There are millions upon millions of galaxies like our Milky Way, which itself has some 200,000,000,000 stars like our sun. So there must be planets around many of these suns, and advanced civilizations on some of them.’ Does that seem reasonable to you? The conviction is so strong in some quarters that massive efforts are under way worldwide to discover extraterrestrial life and communicate with it.

What Is Being Done?

If you traveled to Arecibo in the mountains of Puerto Rico, you would find a gigantic telescope operating. No, it is not a telescope with glass lenses or mirrors, nor an eyepiece through which you could look. Basically it is an enormous aluminum bowl 1,000 feet (305 m) wide, with a collecting area of 20 acres (8 ha). This is not an optical telescope, but a radio telescope. It is a specialized form of antenna designed to collect natural radio noises from deep in space. But it could also receive radio transmissions from advanced civilizations elsewhere in the universe, if such exist.

Though the United States’ telescope at Arecibo is exceptionally large, weighing 625 tons, it is by no means the only such device. The Soviet Union, Great Britain and other nations are also listening to outer space with instruments of this sort. They are tuning in to the universe, seeking intelligent messages, even as you tune a portable radio and turn its antenna in a search for your favorite news station. The hope is that not only are there intelligent beings on other planets, but that they are sending messages that we can pick up.

It cost $17,000,000 (U.S.) to build the radio telescope at Arecibo, and it costs more than $4,000,000 a year to operate it. If you can imagine the combined cost of such efforts in all lands, you can appreciate that the search for life in space is a serious matter.

But such costs are mere pennies compared to what CYCLOPS would cost. Proposed by United States scientists, CYCLOPS would be a concentrated bank of some 1,500 antennas, each 100 meters in diameter, that could be turned in unison by a computer. It is estimated that this project, covering 25 square miles (65 km²), would cost up to $20,000,000,000 to build and $100,000,000 a year to operate.

The zest for contacting life in outer space is not confined to listening. Scientists are also powerfully saying, ‘Hello, out there. Do you read us?’ They are sending messages into outer space.

Ever since we have had radio and television, some electromagnetic transmissions have been seeping into space. But these transmissions have been designed to reach other points on the earth’s surface, not into deep space. So it is felt that even if there were intelligent beings on other planets or in distant galaxies, they probably could not detect and decipher our relatively weak radio and television broadcasts. And given the content of many of these programs, that would hardly be a great loss.

Anyway, serious efforts have recently been under way to beam powerful messages into space. We know that this is possible, for there have been radio and television communications with spacecraft on the moon and with exploring devices sent to Venus and Mars. An exceptional communication effort occurred on November 16, 1974. The radio telescope at Arecibo was turned into a colossal radar transmitter, beaming a message at Messier 13, a star cluster near the edge of the Milky Way, some 24,000 light-years from earth. The message was in a unique code that scientists feel could be deciphered by any civilization technologically advanced enough to receive it.

Yet the messages to outer space have not all been so involved. Pioneer 10, a space vehicle sent toward Jupiter and then on beyond our solar system, had a special plaque attached to it for the information of any extraterrestrial being who found it. The plaque depicted a human male and female, as well as a diagram of the solar system, and the earth as the source of the space probe.

Another such effort was a two-hour copper phonograph record of “earth-sounds” attached to a Voyager spacecraft on its trip through the solar system. The record contained greetings in 50 languages, as well as the “speech” of whales, and sounds such as those of rain, cars and volcanoes. It even included jazz, rock ’n’ roll and classical music selections.

Not waiting to communicate with intelligent life beyond the earth by radio, other scientists have concentrated on the more fundamental step of trying to prove that any such life exists.

You may recall the excitement when “moon rocks” were brought back to earth. The question was, Would they give any evidence of living material, or of former life? Alas, they did not. Then attention focused on the planets, particularly Mars.

Though serious scientists had long since dismissed the possibility of finding ‘men on Mars,’ they did want to search even for microscopic life forms. The Viking I and Viking II vehicles that reached Mars’ surface in 1976 contained special laboratories to analyze Martian soil. Mechanical arms reached out, scooped up some soil and brought it into the laboratories. There it was subjected to long and complicated tests with life-detection instruments. This was a major step in the search for life in outer space.

Why? What Meaning for You?

All this money and all the effort. Why? Is it merely out of curiosity? ‘Far from it,’ might be the response of astronomers, biologists and even many men on the street. “The most exciting thing we can find in science is life on another planet,” says astronomer Frank Drake of the Arecibo project. Similarly, astronomer/​biologist Carl Sagan​—probably the most widely known and ardent exobiologist—​exclaims: “The scientific, logical, cultural and ethical knowledge to be gained by tuning into galactic transmissions may be, in the long run, the most profound single event in the history of our civilization.”

But exactly what is to be gained? you might wonder. In his best-selling book Broca’s Brain, Sagan suggests that advanced technological societies on other planets could offer us the solution to earthly problems: food shortages, population growth, energy supplies, dwindling resources, war and pollution. Sounding even more optimistic, the magazine Omni envisions: “Some advanced civilization might instruct us on how to preserve life, how to avoid disasters and suicide by nuclear war, or by careless destruction of our own earthship’s environment. They might even reveal how we could become immortal.”

Part 2

Is There Intelligent Life Out There?

MAN’S search for intelligent life in outer space has, in a sense, grown up, become an adult. It has been going on in a concentrated way for some 21 years now.

For example, in April 1960 the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia first pointed its cone-shaped ear toward the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani to see if radio communications from them could be heard. In 1968, Soviet astronomers scanned 12 nearby stars similar to our sun. Actually, over 1,000 individual stars have already been examined. And the search is continuing with the massive radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and many others elsewhere.

The search for life in space has proceeded on a different front through numerous rockets launched to the moon and to planets in our solar system​—Jupiter, Venus, Saturn and Mars.

What have been the results so far and what indications are there for the future? Is there a basis for your expecting to wake up some morning and hear a news announcement to the effect that intelligent beings on another planet have definitely been contacted? Or has the search for life in space provided reason to believe that we on earth are unique, that there is no intelligent life out there?

At times excitement has run high among scientists manning radio telescopes tuned to the universe.

Once, for instance, Soviet scientists picked up a signal from space that was not mere random radiation or natural radio noise. It gave evidence of coming from a source directed by intelligent beings. And they were right. It turned out to be a signal from a recently launched American spy satellite.

British astronomers in 1968 were excited about a signal they detected. It seemed to be pulsating from and originating in a distant part of the universe. Could it be a coded signal containing an intelligent message? In fact, they had detected a pulsar, that is, a huge star that spins rapidly and thus seems to flash off-and-on radio signals as with a beam shining from the turning light in a lighthouse. Discovering pulsars was a significant astronomical feat, and now several hundred of them are known. But no intelligent message from extraterrestrial creatures had been found.

Thus with all the variety of signals and noises received by radio telescopes, no messages from intelligent life forms in outer space have been detected. The New York Times of June 26, 1979, observed: “The failure to detect signals and the lack of evidence for long-range colonization by superior civilizations has led some scientists to conclude it is unlikely that such civilizations exist within the Milky Way Galaxy, to which the Earth belongs.”

A fundamental assumption of exobiologists​—those seeking to find life in outer space—​is: There must be millions upon millions of planets around other suns; hence intelligent life surely must have evolved on some of them.

But are there other planets? Maybe yes, maybe no. The fact is that other stars, or suns, are so extremely far away that scientists have not been able to prove whether there are any small planets around them.

David Black of NASA’s Ames Research Center said that “there was still no unequivocal evidence for any planet beyond the solar system to which the Earth belongs.” And Dr. Iosif Shklovsky, a Soviet astronomer and corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, reached a similar conclusion, though having previously been enthused about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. By 1978 he explained: “It looks as though our sun, that strange and solitary star surrounded by a family of planets, is most likely a rare exception in the stellar world.”

One can see, then, that it is certainly unwarranted for persons to speak so positively about advanced civilizations on distant planets. They have not even proved that such planets exist, much less that they have advanced civilizations on them.

Microscopic Life Forms

Though advanced beings have not been located, scientists would draw some relief if they could discover even microscopic life forms on the planets in our solar system. This would give a basis for thinking that if life in any form exists on these planets, then there is still the possibility that beyond our galaxy more developed forms of life could exist. For this reason much attention was focused on the life-detecting laboratories carried to Mars by the American Viking probes.

The two Mars probes, Viking I and II, performed 26 complicated tests on soil samples. For example, one experiment exposed some Martian soil to an atmosphere containing radioactive carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. It was felt that if there were living organisms present, they would convert some of the radioactive carbon into organic material, which could be detected. Another experiment soaked a sample in nutrient solution, monitoring to see if any metabolism took place​—if, as it were, anything ate the food.

Commenting on the overall results, The World Book Science Annual 1978 said: “Despite months of study and attempted interpretation, the results of the experiments were inconclusive.” Why is that position taken? Well, some of the tests gave unexpected responses. The tests did not actually locate any life or even proven organic material. But some scientists have leaned over backwards, clinging to a glimmer of hope that there might be a biological implication to the results instead of these being simply an evidence of unusual chemistry in lifeless Martian soil.

According to the British journal New Scientist, one experiment employed a gas spectrometer that is so sensitive it could detect organic molecules even if there were only a few among a million other molecules or even among a billion. Yet, the test failed “to detect organic molecules in the [Martian] soil.” Klaus Biemann, spokesman for the team analyzing the results, said that “the absence of organic compounds . . . makes it unlikely that living systems that behave in a manner similar to terrestrial biota exist.” Putting it more simply, Newsweek reported that the test “could find no evidence of organic molecules, an essential for the life process on earth and, presumably, anywhere else.”

Consequently, the 26 varied and intricate tests failed to prove that there is even microscopic life on Mars.

Some Are Concluding . . .

Back in 1976, before the Viking probes landed on Mars, astronomer Clay Sherrod observed: “If there’s no life on Mars​—which is so very similar to our planet—​then we very well may be alone. We may be unique in the universe.”

Now that Viking I and II are past history, more and more scientists are reaching that conclusion. Dr. Iosif Shklovsky wrote in the Soviet magazine Sputnik: “[The evidence] suggests that the assumption that we are the only civilization in our galaxy or even the local system of galaxies, if not in the whole universe, is now much more​—not less—​valid than the traditional concept of the plurality of inhabited worlds.”

Also, astronomer Dr. Michael H. Hart described a computer analysis he made of “hypothetical planets, sketching in the features they would seem to require to produce advanced civilizations like our own.” He concluded that, “far from being common, civilized life must be exceedingly rare and the one we have on earth may even be unique.”