The SETI program has been operating for many years, its sole purpose to listen closely to the sounds of the universe for any clue that extra-terrestrial life exists. So far, the SETI program has heard nothing. Unfortunately, the SETI program has a set of ears that can only hear basic radio waves, a form of communication that, universally speaking, must be about as low-tech as you can get. Chances are pretty good that if an alien civilizations exists, they have long since evolved past the radio-band.
Now a group of scientists, led by Paul Davies of Arizona State University, will recommend that researchers begin looking for alien life right here on Earth. It’s not little green men with big cat eyes that Mr. Davies is hunting for, but micro-organisms that that came from other planets in a variety of ways and now find themselves living in remote and secluded locations.
Addressing the meeting to mark the 50th anniversary of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programme — a quest that has fallen far short of its objectives — Professor Davies will argue that demonstrating that life has appeared more than once on Earth would be the best evidence yet that it must exist elsewhere in the Universe.
He told The Times: “We need to give up the notion that ET is sending us some sort of customised message and take a new approach.”
According to Professor Davies, “weird” microbes that belong to a completely separate tree of life, dubbed the “shadow biosphere”, could be present in isolated ecological niches in which ordinary life struggles to survive. Likely hiding places include deserts, scalding volcanic vents, the dry valleys of Antartica or salt-saturated lakes.
One team, led by Felisa WolfeSimon, of the US Geological Survey, is investigating the possibility that places that are heavily contaminated with arsenic, such as the Mono Lake in California, might support forms of life that use arsenic in the same way that other life forms use phosphorus.
