"Is it true that scientists at NASA are looking for life on the moons of Jupiter?"
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Question
Why should life be searched on other worlds?
During the second half of the twentieth century new perspectives on the possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmos have become of interest. Astronomers have found that we live within a grouping of billions of stars, gas, and dust called the Milky Way galaxy and that our home galaxy is just one among billions of similar galaxies that sprinkle the visible universe. Although the enormous number of stars in all these galaxies suggests many possibilities for other forms of life, astronomers have come to see that the immense distances that measure the universe imply that we on Earth may well be isolated from personal visits, and that the best way to find our neighbors may be to detect their radio messages.
The search for life elsewhere is important in understanding the origin of life on Earth. If we could understand the origin of life on Earth, we could hope to estimate how common or rare life may be among the starry systems that surround us. Knowledge of how life began would allow us to compare the conditions on Earth that gave birth to life about four billion years ago with those that we hypothesize to exist on other planets, within interstellar clouds, and in other locations where we can imagine that life may have arisen.
December 11, 2001
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