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Alone in the Universe? |
| Section: NATURAL SCIENCE / SCIENCE ESSAY |
| Author: D.e. Brownlee |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 2/1/2001 |
| Size: 2,810 Words, 17,194 Characters |
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In the past millennium, the human species finally completed its long campaign of exploring planet Earth. Driven by curiosity, hunger, greed, religion, or hostile forces, wanderers stumbled onto virtually every region of the planet. When unknown lands were reached, they were usually already inhabited. Even when barren of human inhabitants, the newly discovered lands often provided environments that were at least marginally suitable for habitation. New immigrants could use their brains, tools, and agriculture to survive in all but the harshest deserts, the driest islands, the bleakest polar regions, and the highest mountains.
Given the heady success of our species, it has seemed natural to imagine that people, or at least comparable beings, would flourish on other worlds in the vast un...
. . .
...oks, Boulder, Colo.,1998.
Stuart Ross Taylor, Destiny or Chance : Our Solar System and Its Place in the Cosmos, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2000.
Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Advanced Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, Copernicus, New York, 2000. On the Internet Rare Earth http://www.astro.washington.edu/rareearth/ SETI http://www.seti-inst.edu vbcrlf
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