"As children we fear the dark. The unknown troubles us.
Anything might be out there. Ironically it’s our fate to live in the dark. Head
out from the earth in any direction you choose, and after an initial flash of
blue, you are surrounded by blackness; punctuated only here and there by the
faint distant stars. Even after we're grown the darkness retains its power to
frighten us, and so there are those who say we should not enquire too closely,
into who else might be living in that darkness. Better not to know, they say.
There are four hundred billion stars in the Milky Way
galaxy. Of this immense multitude, could it be that our humdrum sun is the only
one with an inhabited planet? Maybe, maybe the origin of life or intelligence
is exceedingly improbable. Or maybe civilizations arise all the time but wipe
themselves out as soon as they are able. Or, here and there peppered across
space. Maybe there are worlds something like our own. On which other beings
gaze up and wonder as we do, about who else lives in the dark.
Life is a comparative rarity. You can survey dozens of
worlds and find that in only one of them does life arise, and evolve, and
persist. If we humans ever go to those worlds, then it will be because a nation
or a consortium of them, believes it to be of its advantage, or to the
advantage of the human species. In our time we have crossed the solar system
and sent four ships to the stars. But we continue to search for inhabitants.
Life looks for life -Carl Sagan.
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