Extraterrestrial life

Extraterrestrial life, if it exists, is any life that did not obviously originate on the earth. It has been a staple of science fiction since the Edwardian era, but has also lately become the subject of intense speculation, scientific debate, and even theological debate.

Definitions

Extraterrestrial means "arising from out of this earth."

Life means living things, regardless of size, appetite, or condition of sentience.

Microbe (from the Greek mikros small) means a form of life too small to see with the naked eye.

Sentient life, also called sapient life (from the official binomial name of man, Homo sapiens), means life that is aware of itself and has language and the ability to reason.

Person means a sentient individual.

Race means a species of sentient individuals. The use of the term race to mean a clan-like "subspecies" is not in view here. In this context, humans all belong to only one race, i.e., the human race.

Civilization means the organization of a large group of persons to facilitate learning, justice, order, management (or acquisition) of resources, and mutual defense.

Extraterrestrial life as a scientific hypothesis

Serious speculation on extraterrestrial life has centered on two possibilities:

1. Microbial ET life, which would figure either in exogenesis of life or the hazard that such microbes might pose to astronauts or to the earth itself.
2. The possibility of prior or future contact, trade, or war with an extraterrestrial civilization.

Microbes and other primitive forms

Extraterrestrial microbes have been and remain the subject of much serious scientific speculation. Such speculation has centered on three questions:

1. Could a microbe of extraterrestrial origin somehow come to earth and cause a killer pandemic?
2. Did life on earth begin with the "seeding" of the earth from outside? This theory, called panspermia, alleges that either (a) the earth acquired the seeds of life by passing through the tail of a comet, or (b) an extraterrestrial civilization sent the seeds of life deliberately for one reason or another. Extraterrestrial microbes would be involved in either case.
3. Might a human crew or human-directed robotic explorer find extraterrestrial microbes on another planet?

With the continued development and perfection of telescopes, astronomers and rocket scientists have openly and often feverishly speculated about whether the other planets in our solar system might harbor forms of life that originated on those planets. This speculation has also extended to Titan, the largest satellite of the planet Saturn.

The major considerations driving such speculation are the requirements of life, and the difficulty with the theory of abiogenesis as a workable origin of life on earth. Most scientists engaged in such speculation seem to agree that life requires at least two things in order to self-generate in any environment:

1. Water
2. An atmosphere

Meteorite believed to have once been a part of Mars and to contain fossil evidence that primitive life may have existed on Mars.Image source

Currently the most exciting subject for speculation concerning extraterrestrial life is the planet Mars. Its atmosphere is quite thin, and this would militate against the presence of life or, more to the point, the presence of standing or flowing water. But photographs taken from orbit and from the surface of Mars reveal erosion channels that strongly suggest that water once flowed on Mars. Indeed, the first graphic above shows changes in a gully in two views of it, taken four years apart--as if liquid water had opened another erosion channel in the meantime. (The operators of the Mars Global Surveyor insist that such pictures might still contain artifacts that make them unsuitable for scientific research, and hence disclaim any definite conclusion that anyone might be tempted to draw from them.) The second graphic shows a meteorite, found in Antarctica in 1984, containing microscopic cavities that once might have held microbes and that, until recently, was believed to have fallen to earth from Mars.

If one could show that abiogenesis occurred on Mars, then that process was far more likely to have occurred on earth than it would be absent such a showing or finding. Yet apart from the reliability of such evidence is this one inherent weakness for this argument: it assumes that life found on Mars originated on Mars. The Hydroplate theory of the Great Flood suggests that large quantities of water, including muddy slurries, were ejected into space during the initial fissure of the original earth's crust, and that these ejecta persist today as comets, asteroids, and meteoroids. If such ejected water and mud fell to Mars from above, then they might have held microbes--and therefore any microbes found on Mars are far more likely to have come from earth during the Noachic Flood than to have originated on Mars.

Space scientists have searched for extraterrestrial microbes for years. To date, no definitive proof of such microbes has been found. The Antarctic meteorite mentioned above, and the alleged bacterial fossils on it, fueled speculation for months, until other scientists finally determined that the microbes involved probably were earthly contaminants.

Nevertheless, the finding of extraterrestrial microbes on Mars is one of the fondest expressed hopes of NASA planetary scientists and of other scientists and advocacy groups hoping to persuade the United States government, or perhaps the United Nations, to fund crewed expeditions to Mars. Furthermore, no sane space mission planner could in good conscience ignore the potential hazard of the transport of a microbe to earth and the release of that microbe into earth's biosphere. Happily, measures for containing such a microbe, perhaps derived from those measures taken during Project Apollo, would contribute a relatively insignificant amount to the total budget of a program of crewed missions to Mars or to any other celestial body.

Extraterrestrial Civilizations

Do one or more extraterrestrial civilizations exist? Until recently, speculation about extraterrestrial races was confined either to science fiction or to innumerable anecdotal reports of "unidentified flying objects." These latter reports were once the subject of an investigation, known as Project Blue Book, by the United States Air Force. But years after Blue Book wound down, a large cadre of scientists began to entertain seriously the notion that extraterrestrial civilizations might exist.

The two questions that most speculators raise regarding extraterrestrial civilizations are mainly whether:

1. Such a civilization might somehow communicate with, or visit, or even attempt to invade and conquer, the earth.
2. Humans, in their further-ranging exploration of space, will eventually encounter, trade with, or go to war with, such civilizations.

In addition to the relatively serious speculation in the scientific community, a number of movements have arisen that share a number of features in common with pagan religions. Chief among these movements has been:

1. The Raelians, who believe that their minds are the formerly disembodied souls of extraterrestrial persons (and who therefore believe that their minds are extraterrestrial in origin though their bodies are not).
2. The Hale-Bopp movement, whose members committed suicide in the season of the close passage near the earth of Comet Hale-Bopp.
3. The UFO movement, which exists as a loose alliance of organizations all having the initials "UFO" in their names, viz., "Mutual UFO Network", "Center for UFO Studies," "Fund for UFO Research," etc.

To these categories one must add the Nation of Islam, especially when it came under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan, and most especially when he expressed a belief that the original founder of the Nation of Islam lives today in an extraterrestrial spacecraft called the "Mother Wheel," and that Farrakhan himself has been taken on board that vessel for consultations with this person.

In addition to Blue Book, NASA has maintained Project SETI (for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). This search consists mainly of listening by radiotelescope on a defined frequency band for any transmission having any semblance of order. This frequency band is one that, they believe, is the likeliest region in the electromagnetic spectrum for anyone to be sending a signal intended to cross interstellar, or even intergalactic, space.

Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, in 1973, openly speculated on a form of exogenesis called directed panspermia, in which such an extraterrestrial nation-state fired a brace of missiles, each laden with bacteria and/or blue-green algae, in all directions. One such missile crashed on earth, and we are its by-product, as it were, their theory states.

Politicians (among them, former President of the United States Jimmy Carter) have openly speculated on the existence of extraterrestrial nation-states. For further details, see the main article on Exotheology.

No definitive evidence exists for any form of extraterrestrial civilization. While the Project Blue Book investigators found a number of cases that they had to classify as "unknown," they were able to classify the bulk of the anecdotes as anything from outright hoaxes to misinterpretations of common weather features to misinterpretation of the sightings of ordinary aircraft. Neither has any astronomer or astronaut reported a definite sighting of, much less contact with, any carrier-like vessel that would have been capable of launching any of the alleged two-seater or similar small-crewed craft that various "witnesses" report having encountered. Nor has any physicist yet suggested a method by which such a craft could have visited our solar system, given the fixed speed limit set by the Special Theory of Relativity. Finally, the SETI project, for all their searching for a signal (even to recruiting civilians to participate in a "distributed computing" project to process the noise they have received from their radiotelescopes), have never isolated anything like a definite signal.

Extraterrestrial Life in Science Fiction

Extraterrestrial nation-states and, almost as often, extraterrestrial microbes, have been a staple of science fiction since soon after science-fiction writers first began speculating on what sort of inventions might carry men into outer space, and what they might discover there. H. G. Wells even speculated on an extraterrestrial civilization on the moon, peopled, if that is the right word, by man-sized insects (The First Men in the Moon). Wells also speculated that the Martian nation-state would launch an invasion of earth (The War of the Worlds), an invasion that would fail when the Martian soldiers and pilots fell terminally ill with earthly microbes against which their immune systems would have no defense. Edgar Rice Burroughs indulged in far richer speculation on an entire civilization on Mars, and on semi-regular commerce between his Martians and a select few visitors from earth.

The middle twentieth century saw the introduction of a number of popular-culture icons that were either:

1. Humans caught up in events on other, inhabited worlds, some of which were making war against the earth, or
2. An extraterrestrial "refugee" that became an obvious God-substitute after, Moses-like, he crashed to earth in a small space capsule launched from a world that later destroyed itself in a cataclysm far more devastating than the Great Flood had been.

In addition to this, the motion picture industry, especially in the United States but also in Great Britain, produced scores of low-budget films having a theme involving an extraterrestrial nation-state attempting either:

1. To recruit humans, usually by fraudulent means, into assisting them in weapons or defensive-systems development,
2. To subvert human society and/or the international community by infiltration or by playing some individual humans or human nation-states against others, or:
3. To invade the earth by main force.

The motion picture industry abandoned that theme as the century progressed, and produced a number of films showing extraterrestrials to be friendly. Toward the very end of the century, the theme of extraterrestrial invasion returned, in the form of a number of high-budget films that linked the basic theme to a number of modern-day legends, including:

1. The alleged crash of an extraterrestrial scout craft near Roswell, New Mexico, United States.
2. The synthetic religion, called Scientology, which the late science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard developed literally on a wager.

The Star Trek television franchise that Gene Roddenberry created, with its myriad of extraterrestrial and often trans-galactic nation-states and empires hardly needs introduction. But in addition, producer Quinn Martin created a series that centered on one man's attempt to warn his government that certain people were not what they appeared, but were instead extraterrestrial spies. More recently, Kenneth Johnston created a concept (V) of a space-borne force whose commanding admiral and officers at first puts on a friendly appearance similar to that of Matthew Perry (the American commodore who first visited Japan) but, soon afterward, subvert human governmental and media institutions in order to further their true purpose, which is to steal earth's water and carry away earth's population for food.

Nor have science fiction writers ignored speculation on the finding of extraterrestrial microbes. Usually they have portrayed such microbes as capable of producing deadly extinction-level pandemics. (See, for example, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton.) John B. Olson and Randall S. Ingermanson, however, speculated that the first crew to fly to Mars might discover incontrovertible evidence of microbial life--including a culturable microbe. This would engender excitement in the hearts of their launch authorites, but would also inspire such fear in the mind of a NASA engineer that she would actually attempt to strand or murder the crew to stop them from back-contaminating the earth with their culture.

The Bible and Extraterrestrial Life

The question of whether an extraterrestrial civilization, or any race capable of forming such an institution, is compatible or incompatible with the Bible, is in sharp dispute. Those insisting that the Bible is entirely compatible with extraterrestrial races hold that the Bible contains no verse that says directly that man is the only sentient race in the universe. Still others quote this verse:

I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. John 10:16 (NASB)

Christian critics of this position point out that that verse probably referred to the distinction between Jew and Gentile that Jesus, and the Apostles after him, often made. Eventually, these Apostles, and especially Paul, hoped to make that a distinction without a difference--a hope that many Christians today still cherish. But more to the point, these Christian critics reject the proposition that "other sheep" might include extraterrestrial races. They hold that the presence of such a race would give the lie to the claim of Jesus Christ that He came to take away the sin of the world., and that He died once and only once to bring this about. They contend that since Jesus id refered to singly (as he was an individual person), this rules out the possibility of an alien counterpart to Jesus, and that an alien counterpart to Jesus is a neccasery precondition for an alien nation to exist.--and that Kingdom is also not of this universe, or "cosmos".

That other non-Christians not only acknowledge, but indeed explicitly declare, that the Bible and extraterrestrial civilization are incompatible, must also figure in any consideration of such "compatibility."

The presence of extraterrestrial microbes on one or more of the other planets in our solar system (most likely Mars) does excite some fear in Christian quarters. But not all Christians harbor such fear, and even young earth creationists are quite confident that they could explain such a finding. For example, if the hydroplate theory is correct and a slurry of mud from the Great Flood traveled to Mars and poured itself out upon it, then such a slurry would almost certainly contain microbes. That some of these might be extremophiles, and thus capable of long-term survival even in such a harsh environment as that of Mars, is entirely possible and would allow complete harmony between the finding of microbes in such locations and the Biblical account of earth pre-history.

Hugh MacDiarmid

The Innumerable Christ, a poem in Scots by Hugh MacDairmid, is one of the most remarkable meditations on the theme of Christian redemption and other worlds:

Wha kens on whatna Bethlehems
Earth twinkles like a star the nicht,
An' whatna shepherds lift their heids
In its unearthly licht?

'Yont a' the stars oor een can see
An' farther than their lichts can fly,
I' mony an unco warl' the nicht
The fatefu' bairnies cry.

I' mony an unco warl' the nicht
The lift gaes black as pitch at noon,
An' sideways on their chests the heids
O' endless Christs roll doon.

An' when the earth's as cauld's the mune
An' a' its folk are lang syne deid,
On coontless stars the Babe maun cry
An' the Crucified maun bleed.
[2]

See Also

• Essay: Extraterrestrial Life and the Bible
• Exotheology