Timothy Ferris

QUESTION: What's your personal gut feeling about whether there is life elsewhere in the universe?

FERRIS: We haven't yet found any conclusive evidence of life beyond Earth, but then we've only begun to search for it. To jump to the conclusion that we are alone in the universe, just because we haven't yet found alien life at this stage of our exploration, would be rather like my concluding that giant squid don't exist because there are no giant squid here in my office. I shouldn't be surprised if life turns out to be much more cosmically abundant than scientists have anticipated, or if it exists in places and forms stranger than anyone has ever imagined

QUESTION: Where are scientists looking for life now? Why in these places?

FERRIS: Here in the solar system, Mars remains an intriguing possibility, although it will probably take much more investigation - perhaps even manned missions to Mars - to determine whether there's life there. Europa, a moon of Jupiter that shows signs of having a global ocean beneath its ice-sheathed surface, might harbor life. A robotic submarine could be dispatched to search that ocean, with schoolchildren around the world watching it on the Internet, hoping to be the first to discover extraterrestrial life.

QUESTION: Evidence of planets orbiting nearby stars has been found, and NASA has plans to orbit high-resolution telescopes that could detect signs of life on these planets.

FERRIS: Farther out there may be extraterrestrial civilizations beaming radio signals our way. Detecting such signals is the business of SETI - the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. These privately funded projects have, I would estimate, an even chance of detecting a signal within the next twenty years.

QUESTION: How likely do you think it is that we'll ever encounter extraterrestrial life forms?

FERRIS: Extremely likely, if we keep searching. The question, of course, is how long it will take.

QUESTION: Aside from the conventional little green men (and women, of course), what kinds of extraterrestrial life forms do you think are most likely?

FERRIS: Life on Earth remained in rather rudimentary forms for most of the history of our planet; the first multicelled organisms appeared only about 600 million years ago, when this planet was already 85 percent of its present age. So life on another planet might seem rather unimpressive at first glimpse. But even a lowly alien life form would be of incalculable value in understanding the nature of life - in learning whether, for instance, life elsewhere is based on carbon compounds, as we are, and whether the DNA molecule is universal or an accident that happened on just our one planet.

QUESTION: Do you think there's likely to be intelligent life out there? If so, why?

FERRIS: This is a much harder question to answer. It's rather like estimating, in pre-Columbian times, the likelihood that there was a huge continent in the ocean between Europe and Asia. But there are so many planets out there - about a billion trillion of them - that intelligent life would have to be amazingly rare for us to be the only ones capable of sending signals to other star systems.

QUESTION: How likely do you think it is that some sort of intelligent extraterrestrial life is aware of us?

FERRIS: Not very likely. We're cosmically conspicuous only in that we radiate radio and TV broadcasts into space, and to date these transmissions have reached out less than one hundred light years, meaning that they have been detectable on but a small fraction of the planets in our galaxy. That's one reason the SETI projects listen but don't broadcast: They rely on the assumption that alien civilizations exist that have been in the radio business longer than we have.

QUESTION: What would be the impact of the discovery of life elsewhere - either relatively simple organisms or intelligent beings of some kind?

FERRIS: Scientifically, the discovery of extraterrestrial life would be the greatest discovery of all time. Its impact on other fields of human thought are, in my estimation, literally incalculable.

QUESTION: Humans seeking life on other worlds have usually imagined encountering older and more advanced civilizations. Assuming the existence of intelligent life elsewhere and given what we know about the evolution of the universe, how likely is it that there are civilizations substantially older than ours?

FERRIS: We don't know, but the ones from which we'd be likely to receive signals would probably be much older, for the reasons I mentioned a moment ago.

QUESTION: Speaking of older civilizations, if humanity survives another two thousand years, would you speculate on how we would be different?

FERRIS: Think of how much human life has changed over the past two thousand years, with the development of science, the advent of universities and libraries, global communications and transportation, and the freeing of millions of people from ignorance, tyranny, and an early grave, then extrapolate that on a rising curve. Of course, it could also happen that the scope of human cruelty and folly will rise, too. Either way, we're going to get what we deserve.

QUESTION: How much money is being spent on the search for life beyond Earth? Why should the search be a financial priority? Should we spend even more money on it, and if so, why?

FERRIS: Big science is a bargain, and it's always inviting to say that projects for which one has a personal enthusiasm should get more money. Also I do wonder why, in the midst of an unprecedented economic boom in the wealthiest nation ever to exist on Earth, we're talking about cutting back spending on science and space exploration - and why, for that matter, we think we cannot afford to pay school teachers a decent wage. However the question ultimately is not how much money we spend but how wisely we spend it. By cutting back on pointless and wasteful space projects like the International Space Station, we can free up funds for far more exciting missions that look for life beyond Earth.

Searching for extraterrestrial life is a bit like searching for the Fountain of Youth: Even if we don't find what we set out for, we're bound to come across something interesting and valuable.

QUESTION: Why is LIFE BEYOND EARTH a timely program right now?

FERRIS: Human beings have long speculated about life beyond Earth, with some convinced that life is abundant and others equally convinced that we're all alone. What has changed recently is that we've now got the tools to go past speculation and start actually searching for life - by sending probes to other planets, orbiting telescopes that can look for signs of life on the planets of nearby stars, and by using radio telescopes in SETI projects to listen for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.

Meanwhile, we're finding that life here on Earth is a lot tougher than had been thought. There are terrestrial organisms that live at near-boiling temperatures in hot springs, and others that thrive in blocks of methane ice. There's life floating far up in the air, and in core samples drilled miles into the Earth. We now know that life does not require sunlight at all. Such findings suggest that the "habitable zone," the region of the solar system where we might expect to find life, is larger than had been estimated. There could be life, for instance, in cold, gaseous planets like Jupiter and Saturn, or on their many satellites. That's one reason that NASA has identified the search for extraterrestrial life as the mainspring driving future missions to explore the solar system and beyond.