In here?
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A scientist says there's no need to search in space for alien
life?that it's right here on earth. Instead of a mission to
Mars, he wants to launch a "mission to earth" to look for it.
Researcher Paul Davies thinks that strange, hitherto unknown
forms of life may be lurking in toxic lakes or in vents under
the ocean that heat nearby water to the boiling point.
In BBC News, James Morgan quotes Davies as saying, "We
don't have to go to other planets to find weird life. It could
be right in front of our noses?or even in our noses. It is
entirely reasonable to expect we will find a shadow biosphere
here on Earth. But nobody has actually taken the trouble to
look. The question is why? The cost is not expensive?it
would be a fraction of the money we spend searching for
extraterrestrial life."
The question WE'RE asking is, how did it get here? Did it
come down in the form of "red rain" from space that Linda
reported on last week? There are theories that we are
all "Martians," since life may have traveled to this planet from
Mars, riding on an asteroid.
Davies says, "We know
rocks do
get traded between the two planets, and life could hitch a
ride. Personally, I'm only interested in establishing whether
life happened more than once. If we find it has happened
twice from scratch then it's going to have happened all
around the universe. It's going to be teeming with life and
there's a very good chance we are not alone."
Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
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