What's so "Special" about this "Edition" you say? Nothing really. It's just an earlier draft of my research paper with some stuff that was cut out, probably some typos here and there, and some info that wasn't added until I put up the finished version.

Greek Philosopher Metrodorus once said that "To consider Earth as the only populated world is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field sown with millet only one grain will grow." He wasn't the only one that has felt this way. Since the dawn of time, humans have looked up at the stars in the nighttime sky, wondering whether they were alone in this vast Universe of ours or not. Many people, like Metrodorus, believed that there must be at least a small spark of life somewhere out there, while there have been many others who have scoffed at the idea of life existing elsewhere. It is now many centuries later, the year 2001, and the same question is still being asked. We still have yet to find an answer to it despite several steps forward towards a final conclusion. However, despite massive amounts of research and analysis, there is still no hard evidence that proves, without a doubt, that intelligent life does or does not exist outside of the planet Earth.

One skeptic, Michael H. Hart of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, has a rather simple explanation for the reason he believes that there is no intelligent life outside of Earth. He believes that if there indeed are other civilizations containing intelligent life somewhere out there, we should have ran into them by now. According to him, they should be capable of interstellar flight and have the ability to colonize space. Since we have not yet run into any of these civilizations, he thinks that they must not exist (Arvey 21).

However, many disagree with him, although for different reasons. Author Thomas McDonough feels that maybe "they are here right now, but don't want to make themselves known" (qtd. in Arvey 20), while author and scientist Isaac Asimov's view of this situation is a little different. He made a statement in his book Extraterrestrial Civilizations that counters Hart's belief. In the book, Asimov stated that "we have not been visited by them [other civilizations], very likely because the interstellar distances are too great to be penetrated" (qtd. in Arvey 22).

Carl Sagan supported Asimov's viewpoint in his book Cosmos when he wrote that "If there are millions of civilizations distributed more or less randomly through the galaxy, the distance to the nearest is about two hundred light-years [12,000 trillion miles] away. Evan at the speed of light [light travels 186,000 miles a second; six trillion miles a year] it would take two centuries for a radio message to get from there to here" (qtd. in Arvey 22).

Sagan has also theorized that black holes could possibly be used as a shortcut through time and space. Black holes are formed when the gravity within a star becomes so strong it collapses into itself with so much force and becomes so dense that no form of matter and not even light can escape. Although the existence of black holes has been proven, unlike the existence of intelligent life outside of Earth, very little is known about the true nature of the physics involved within one (Arvey 23). A black holes abilities to bend time and space is currently the subject of many heated debates within the scientific community, and a discussion of that would be a completely different topic of it's own, requiring massive amounts of research. An attempt on my part to fully explain the black hole phenomenon would result in what would basically be a research paper within a research paper.

As I mentioned, Michael H. Hart believes that if any advanced civilizations have existed outside of Earth, we would know by now because we would have surely have run into them by now or at least had some kind of contact with these civilizations. Since we haven't made any contact yet, intelligent life outside of Earth must not exist (Arvey 21). However, how do we really know that we haven't had any contact with them? Maybe we have, but we just haven't realized it yet.

Duncan Lunan, a young Scottish "spaceflight enthusiast," once claimed that he had evidence of a probe originating from an alien civilization circling the Earth. His evidence was based on his own personal interpretations of a few mysterious "long-delayed echoes" (LDEs) of short-wave radio signals that had been first heard by European researchers in the 1920s (Sheaffer 129).

The main reason he believed that a "space probe from a distant civilization" was an apparent discovery he made concerning echoes that had been recorded on October 11, 1928. Lunan reported that he had found a way to take echoes, recorded by Dr. B. Van der Pol of Philips Radio in the Netherlands, and plot them on a map to create a map of the stars in the constellation Bootes (Sheaffer 129). In an excerpt from his book, Interstellar Contact, Duncan said " ... If the data points are plotted with delay time on the y-axis (normal scientific practice, followed by all the 1920s experimenter' s who presented their results graphically), nothing significant appears. With delay time on the x-axis, however, the graph looks more like an intelligent signal (fig.1). There is a vertical "barrier" at 8 seconds dividing the diagram into two parts of an equal area; on the left there is a single dot, at three seconds, which was unique in being an exact repeat of the transmitted signal, three dots, the other echoes being 2 second long dashes.

However, many seriously doubt that Lunan had really made some kind of major discovery. First of all, this map only resembles the constellation; it is not an exact replica of Bootes. Two stars, Epsilon Bootis (the star he believes the probe came from) and Arcturus (Alpha Bootis) are out of place on his map. Lunan explains that Arcturus is out of place simply because it's position appears to change much more rapidly to earthlings than the positions of any of the other stars. He uses this information to hypothesis that the probe had arrived about 13,000 years ago. His only explanation for Epsilon Bootis is that if the point representing the star is "moved to the right to be equidistant from the vertical line on the other side of it," that then completes the picture of the constellation Bootes. One thing that he has failed to explain is how the 'Booteans' had learned of the "arbitrary constellation boundaries" created by earthlings (Sheaffer 129-132).

Lunan, feeling inspired by his discovery, went on to find more ways to force-fit other long-delay echos onto maps resembling yet more constellations. Unfortunately for him, skeptics had no problem shooting down his findings and pointing out serious flaws in his methods (Sheaffer 132).

Duncan Lunan wasn't the only one to get strange radio signals (although the findings from others were much more believable). "Another of Tesla's claimed discoveries at Colorado Springs came late one night as he was working at his powerful and sensitive radio receiver. Only elderly Mr. Dozier, the carpenter, remained on duty. Suddenly the inventor became aware of strange rhythmic sounds on the receiver. He could think of no possible explanation for such a regular pattern, unless it were an effort being made to communicate with Earth by living creatures on another planet. Venus or Mars he supposed to be the more likely sources. No one at that time had ever heard of such phenomena as regular sounds from space" (qtd. in "Artificial Lighting, Radio Experiments"). The patterns of these radio signals were not "traceable to any known cause," meaning Tesla could not find any other phenomenon that sent out such signals. "Such a clear suggestion of number and order" gave him reason to believe that he may have stumbled upon a message sent to Earth by an intelligent civilization existing elsewhere in the universe (Arvey 23).

Although I haven't been able to find any information on what else could have caused these radio signals, I have come across another interesting case that was able to be explained. In 1967, a team of radio astronomers headed by Dr. Anthony Hewish received a series of radio signals on a radio telescope that, not unlike the waves received by Tesla, came from space and were unusual in the regularity in which the series had come in. These signals were later explained to be that of a pulsar. Scientist Thomas Gold theorized (and it was later proven) that pulsars are spinning neutron stars (Arvey 24).

There was, however, one other strong signal that is still unexplained. On August 15, 1977, the Ohio State University picked up a signal that only occurred once and was never found again. It was called the Wow! signal, from the note written in the margin of the computer printout by Dr. Jerry Ehman ("Wow! Signal Page"). "I came across the strangest signal I had ever seen, and immediately scribbled 'Wow!' next to it," Ehman explained. "At first, I thought it was an earth signal reflected from space debris, but after I studied it further, I found that couldn't be the case" (qtd. in Shuch). "The signal rises about 15 dB above the mean background noise, in a single channel. The actual symbols (shown in the picture below) are a time series representation of the signal amplitude, as received by the Big Ear radio telescope. The symbols 6EQUJ5 represent the number of standard deviations by which the received signal exceeds the average background noise, on a scale of 0 to 35." For example, a "0" means that the signal is not any stronger than background noise, a "1" means that the signal is one sigma above the background noise level, a "9" means that it is nine sigma above the background level, an "A" would be ten sigma above the background level, and a "U" (the strongest peak of the Wow! signal) is "30 standard deviations above the mean background level." "A" is the first letter in the alphabet and U is the 21st, therefore an "A" simply means 9+1 and a "U" means 9+2 ("Wow! Signal Page").

Analyzing the Wow! signal shows that its source was moving with the background stars. From its "Doppler shift signature," terrestrial interference (such as interference from radios and telecommunications equipment), aircraft, and spacecraft can all be ruled out as the possible origin of the signal. It was indicated by the antenna coordinates that the signal was not coming from any known nearby stars ("Wow! Signal Page"). Most importantly, even though several different radio observatories performed more than one hundred follow-on studies of the same region of sky where the Wow! Signal came from, it was never repeated (Shuch).

As amazing as the signal may seem, the fact that the signal has not been picked up again casts some doubts on whether it was sent from another civilization. Ehman himself has said that "Even if it were intelligent beings sending a signal, they'd do it far more than once" and "We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-bound signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris" (qtd. in Kawa). However, since the Ohio State Big Ear radio telescope views just one part in a million of the sky at any given time (which is an extremely narrow beam width), that can make it difficult for a repeat signal to be picked up if it is ever sent again ("Wow! Signal Page").

Even if the signals were from alien civilizations, there are still a few obstacles in our way. Ian Ridpath, author of Message from the Stars, says that if the basic science theories are true, the nearest possible alien civilization must be about 2,000 light-years away. That would mean that it would take about 2,000 years for a message traveling at the speed of light to get here, then another 2,000 years for before they could receive a reply from us. After the round-trip lasting 4,000 years, we could all be gone. In addition to that problem, Gerrit Verschuur says that "no two civilizations are likely at the same stage of development." What he meant was that we may be unable to decipher what message an alien civilization was trying to send us with a radio signal (Arvey 27). This would be like a human trying to speak with a primate. Although there has been some success in teaching a few of them sign language, chances are a chimpanzee would have no idea what I was talking about if I went up to it and told it my life story.

If we are receiving messages from distant civilizations, how many are out there trying to contact us? Is there just one in some far off corner of the universe, or is our own galaxy just teeming with life waiting to be discovered? No one knows for sure how many advanced civilizations exist in the universe, if any, but one man has attempted to estimate this number.

Frank Drake once asked "What do we need to know about to discover life in space?" Well, answering his own question, Drake came up with several factors that might need to known and used them to created something he called The Drake Equation, which looks like this:

While working as a radio astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, he created this equation in 1961 to "estimate the number of technological civilizations that might exist among the stars" (qtd. in "Drake Equation Background"). It identifies the specific factors that are thought to play an important role in the development of advanced technological civilizations. "N* represents the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy," "fp is the fraction of stars that have planets around them," ne is the "number of planets per star that are capable of sustaining life," "fl is the fraction of planets in ne where life evolves," "fi is the fraction of fl where intelligent life evolves," "fc is the fraction of fi that communicate," "fL is fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations may survive," and Nc is "the number of communicating civilizations in the galaxy." Right now, it is estimated that there are 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy ("The Drake Equation").

20% to 50% of these stars are estimated to have planetary systems. For each of these stars, it is estimated that they may have 1 to 5 planets possibly capable of supporting life (different people have suggested different numbers; some only count Earth and Mars as planets capable of supporting life in our solar system and there say that ne should be 2, some count a few of Jupiter's moons and suggest that the number may be as high as 5, but I'll get more into that later). Out of those planets (and moons), you could use the argument that "Where life can evolve it will" and say that life will evolve on 100% of those planets. Out of those, it is estimated that 50% will evolve intelligent life, and 10% to 20% of the intelligent life are estimated to have the "means and desire" to communicate. To get a number for fL is probably more difficult than the other numbers. If we use Earth as our model, the expected lifetime of our Solar System is about 10 billion years. Communication by radio has been around for under 100 years. How long will our civilization last? If we were to die today, the estimated fraction of the planet's life that each civilization will survive would be 1/100,000,000th. However, if we were to survive for another 10,000 years, the number would be reduced considerably down to 1/1,000,000th ("The Drake Equation").

In order to put this equation to use, I've decided to plug some numbers in and see what Nc would come out to be. If I were to be conservative and use 200 billion for N*, 50% for fp, 1% for ne, 50% for fl, 20% for fi, 20% for fc, and 100,000,000 for fL, Nc would turn out to be 20. However, this is just a rough (very rough) estimate. As previously stated, Earth is approximately 10,000,000,000 years old. We have been communicating by radio for less than 100 years. If the entire human race were to die out today, fL would be 1/100,000,000, and Nc, "the number of communicating civilizations in the galaxy" would only be 20. However, we have absolutely no idea when the human race will be extinct, or if it ever will. Out of curiosity, I decided to pull up a few numbers of my own and plug them into the equation just to compare the results. If we continue to live and communicate another 9,900 years, fL would turn into 1/1,000,000, and Nc would be 2000. If we were to die out 100 years from now, fL would be 1/50,000,000, and Nc would be 40. In only 100 years (a relatively short time considering the estimated age of Earth), the number of estimated communicating civilizations in the Milky Way will double from 20 to 40. Not only that, but most of the other numbers in the equation are rough estimates and could be wrong. A minor change here and there could result in a drastically larger or smaller number. Before we go on, let's not forget that these are only the numbers for the Milky Way Galaxy. There are another few billion galaxies out there for life to develop in, each with up to billions upon billions more stars within themselves. If out of those billions of stars an intelligent civilization develops in only one planet of every galaxy, that is still an overwhelming number of civilizations out there. Even with all the variables and no definite solution to The Drake Equation, it is still a "generally accepted tool used by the scientific community to examine these factors" ("The Drake Equation").

Let's say my first estimate was actually correct, and there are 20 civilizations in this galaxy today capable of communicating. Where are they? Well, they could be anywhere, but chances are they probably aren't on in our own Solar System. However, there is a chance that there may have been life, if not intelligent life at least some form of life, on another planet or even a moon within the same Solar System that we live in.

Although Jupiter's moon Europa probably doesn't have an advanced civilization on it, it is one of the more promising places in our solar system for the existence of some kind of life. The spacecraft Voyager took pictures of lines on the that cross the surface of Europa that look very much like they may be cracks in the ice. "High-resolution images of the surface taken by the Galileo spacecraft have revealed a world with a complex surface covered in groves, icy domes, and features remarkably similar to the ice rafts found in the oceans of the Earth." The lack of many craters on the surface tells us that it must be fairly young, and suggests that Europa is either currently active geologically, or at least has been in the recent past. The appearance of the surface also suggests that below the frozen layer of ice there may exist an ocean of liquid water. Water is one of the major requirements for life. Below 100 to 150 km of ice and possibly an ocean, Europa is a nothing but rock (Urquhart). “It is a long way from finding water to finding life,” said Kivelson, “but it certainly makes it a more intriguing possibility,” (qtd. in "Life on Europa?") says space physics scientist Margaret G. Kivelson. The contact between the water and rock could provide "ingredients essential to life, especially if the rocky portion of the moon is volcanically active, as it would have been early in the history of the solar system" (Urquhart). Also, "Europa could possibly produce sources of energy for basic chemical reactions needed for life, thanks to billions of charged particles that constantly rain down from Jupiter," says Stanford University professor Christopher Chyba (qtd. in "Jupiter Radiation"). Even if there is no ocean existing under the surface of Europa, it is almost certain without a doubt that one did exist at one time in the past. The copious amounts of water and the likelihood of past volcanic activity on Europa has caused some scientists to believe that there is an even better chance of life on Jupiter's moon than there is on Mars (Urquhart).

But there are many that still feel Mars is a strong candidate as a place where life had once existed. Despite the extreme cold and dryness of the surface of Mars today, it is very like that in the distant past, the climate of Mars may have been a much more hospitable place for life. "Billions of years ago, water flowed on the surface of Mars, indicating Mars had a wetter, and probably warmer, climate". Even with the "seemingly inhospitable surface," the discovery of life in some of the most extreme environments on the Earth suggests that life could also be living somewhere deep underground on Mars today. The martian subsurface most likely holds within it a large amount of ice, maybe even some liquid water. "The presence of volcanos on Mars, which can melt ground ice and circulate water in the subsurface, would provide an excellent environment for microorganisms." In the past Mars has at the very least had all of the requirements for life: liquid water, a source of energy, and the "chemical building blocks of life" (Urquhart).

In August of 1996, NASA announced that it had found evidence of life on Mars on a 3.6 billion-year-old rock hailing from the Red Planet. Three months later, British scientists claimed that they had found chemical traces of life in a meteorite that they say also came from Mars. The Britons say they found organic matter in two meteorites. One of the two was the meteorite tested by NASA, and the other was "a newly tested meteorite" that crashed into Earth 600,000 years ago. The rock itself is between 140 million and 160 million years old ("British Present Evidence").

Researchers at London's Open University and London's Natural History Museum say residues and chemicals were present in the rock that only living organisms could have formed ("British Present Evidence"). Kathie Thomas-Keprta and her team at the Johnson Space Center believed that some of the microscopic magnetite crystals found inside of the miniscule carbonate granules found within the meteor had unusual "elongated hexa-octahedral" forms that were so uniform in their size that it was almost impossible for a "nonliving process" to have created it. They must have been created by bacteria that had adapted to Mars' now-dead magnetic field by usings the crystals inside of their cells to "point themselves like a compass needle" in the correct direction in order to take advantage of some of the different kinds of nutrients found underwater (Moomaw). "This is a smoking gun for life on Mars," said chemist Ian Wright, one of the three scientists that participated in the study. "I believe we will be in a position soon to study Martian metabolism" (qtd "British Present Evidence"). "I believe I can say life existed-and may still-exist on Mars" ("Researchers Confirm").

Astronomer and researcher Colin Pillinger told a news briefing that he had present the evidence of life to the magazine Nature in 1989, but other scientists criticized his findings and claims that the evidence showed possible signs of life, saying that the matter found inside of the meteorite (named 79001) could have easily been picked up on the meteorite's trip to Earth. However, after the NASA scientists' announced the evidence they had found in the meteorite AHL 84001, Pillinger decided to re-run his experiment on several samples from both meteorites. This time, to lessen the chances of foreign material not from Mars clouding his findings, he carried out his experiments on parts of 79001 that had become "sealed in a glass-like substance before the meteorite came to Earth," thus insulating the meteorite from the organic matter on Earth ("British Present Evidence").

The most important finding in Pillinger's eyes was that 79001 contained extremely high amounts of organic material that have yet to be identified. "It would be incredibly egotistical to believe we are the only planet with life on it," he said. "To think we are the only place uniquely selected for life would be incredible" (qtd. in "Researchers Confirm").

One interesting feature on Mars that has piqued the interest of a few scientists have been dark spots that have been found near the tops of Martian polar-region dunes. Hungarian scientist A. Horvath came up with a bold theory concerning these spots. He thinks they may be "large films of living Martian algae taking advantage of water frost melting on the dunes in spring to rapidly grow and reproduce before retreating back into dormant spore form after the liquid film of water disappears." His theory is mainly based on the fact that the spots tend to form long streaks running down the surfaces of dunes, indicating that they may following water flowing down the surface of the dunes (Moomaw).

E.F. Albin also has a theory that also deals with water running down the surface of dunes on Mars. However, he thinks the dark spots may be caused by running water sweeping away some material that lie on the Martian surface, exposing darker materials underneath it (Moomaw).

Some scientists are still skeptical, and organizations around the world are still collecting date about Mars to learn more about the mysterious planet. Several trips to the Red Planet are planned for the next 10 years. This past October, NASA has already sent the Mars Odyssey orbit Mars for three years to study minerals, subsurface hydrogen, and radiation on Mars. The Agency also plans on possibly launching both a mobile science laboratory to Mars in 2007,and launch series of Scout missions that may use small planes or landers as scientific platforms (DiChristina). And finally, the European Space Agency may launch a mission in 2009 that would end with a piece of rock actually dug up from Mars and returned to Earth for study. "This is us saying, look, Mars is stuck in man's imagination for a long time and we actually do have the capability on Earth to answer these fundamental problems that puzzle people," said Colin Pillinger (qtd. in Lloyd).

"It would be incredibly egotistical to believe we are the only planet with life on it...To think we are the only place uniquely selected for life would be incredible" said astronomer and research Colin Pillinger (qtd. British Present Evidence"). As much I personally agree with Mr. Pillinger, that is only an opinion. Since human first showed up on Earth, we have often wondered whether we were alone in this universe or not. Many argued against it, many argued for it, and then the rest fit somewhere in-between. We have come quite a long way since the days of our early ancestors. We've built radios and received 'messages from space' on them, we've sent man-made objects into the far reaches of the solar-system, and we've seen incredible things on other worlds that really aren't too far away from our home. However, the most important thing is we still have not found an conclusive evidence proving without a doubt that intelligent life forms exist outside of our own planet. Will we someday solve the mystery? Is there an advanced civilization lurking in the depths of a galaxy far, far away? We still don't and may never know, but one thing is for sure; the truth is out there.

Andrew
Mann

Works Cited

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