Life Out There

A regular theme in science news is the quest for life beyond the pale blue dot we call home. Millions have been spent in the search for signs of life in our own solar system, and with every exoplanet discovery, hope springs that it will be situated in the habitable zone of the star it circles. Unquestionably, finding even fossil traces of life on Mars or one of the moons of our solar system would be exciting news. And, were a sequence of radio pulses detected coming from a nearby star with a repeating pattern corresponding to a set of prime numbers, champagne bottles would be uncorked and proof of intelligent life beyond our world considered a near certainty.

 

But, are we looking in the wrong direction? There's a story about a man searching for his car keys on a dark night. A friend comes along and asks him where he dropped his keys. "Oh, over there by my car, but the light's better over here", he answers. Given our experience in the ecosystem of planet Earth, it is understandable for us to assume that life is confined to planets more or less like our own. Life on the sun or on one of the gas giants of our solar system is an absurdity, based on our notions of habitability and the requirements to sustain biological life. And let's not get started about life in some mysterious astral realm beyond the range of our telescopes sensitive to the electromagnetic spectrum. The light is literally better here, despite its failure to deliver a scintilla of the evidence we seek. 

This blog will examine the unfortunate lack of evidence for life out there and the abundant evidence for life in a dimension of existence immediately adjacent to the one we presently inhabit. More to come.