"Restaurant at the End of the Universe" -NASA's Roadmap to the Search for
"I know this great Restaurant at the End of the Universe." Ford Prefect, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
If we live in a physical universe versus a biological universe, where the ultimate product of cosmic evolution is planets, stars, and galaxies, Steven Dick, NASA's chief historian, suggests it may be human destiny to populate the universe rather than to interact with extraterrestrials: humanity would eventually become the extraterrestrials.
NASA has created an "Astrobiology Roadmap" that outlines pathways for research and exploration to answer three huge questions that have gone unanswered through centuries of human history:
How does life begin and evolve? Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? What is the future of life on Earth and beyond?
The problem with NASA's road map for Arthur Dent and crew of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is that if they followed it, the hungry crew would most likely make it to Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe.
Dick's vision of a biological universe where planetary systems are common with life originating where conditions are favorable and culminating with intelligence is at odds with NASA's current focus on earth-like microbial habitats and water-based habitats, which might be exceedingly rare in the cosmos:
"A planet or planetary satellite is habitable if it can sustain life that originates there or if it sustains life that is carried to the object. Habitable environments must provide extended regions of liquid water, conditions favorable for the assembly of complex organic molecules, and energy sources to sustain metabolism."
Up until this week, when the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council strongly urged that NASA start searching for non-carbon based life forms in it's report "The Limits of Organic Life." NASA's astrobiology program has concentrated on microbial life.
"Nothing," the report concludes, "would be more tragic in the American exploration of space than to encounter alien life and fail to recognize it.”
Earth did not accumulate oxygen during the first roughly 3 billion years, or form an ozone layer until about 1.5 billion years ago. There is considerable emphasis on looking for contemporary Earth atmospheres that have oxygen and an ozone layer, but, the report hits home, we should also be using models with different anaerobic microbial non-carbon ecosystems, atmospheres that might parallel the different stages in the evolution of Earth's atmospheres over 4 billion years, and conditions that could indicate the presence of a tectonically active planet.
The report pointed out that the exploration of the planet is concentrated on looking for places where liquid water exists—which goes along with the idea of where life is found on the Earth. However, they emphasize that liquids such as ammonia, methane, and formamide could also be the building blocks for life.
The challenge of remotely detecting life on a planet that has not developed a biogenic source of oxygen, the NASA "Astrobiology Roadmap" warns, is fraught with unknowns. What chemical species and spectral signatures should be sought? What metabolic processes might be operating? How does one guard against a false positive detection? Research that is guided both by our knowledge of Earth's early (i.e., before the rise of an oxygenated atmosphere) and by studies of alternative biological systems can help address these questions and provide guidance to astronomers seeking evidence of life elsewhere.
While the discovery of microbes will have less effect than the discovery of intelligence the discovery of fossils or microbes derives much of its impact from the fact that it is the first step on the road to intelligence. It would have great scientific interest, but might not necessitate the realignment of theologies and world philosophies.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 3001 will contain the answer to humankind's great question: whether or not we are alone in the universe, at least within our galaxy. Olaf Stapledon's vision of "Interplanetary Humanity" fifty years ago will be extended to "Interstellar Humanity," in which our philosophy, religion, and science are much more attuned to the cosmos. By then we will know if we live in a physical or a biological universe, and we may even have traveled our nearest star some 40 light years away in Alpha Centauri.
Posted by Casey Kazan
Recent Related Galaxy Posts:
The Biological Universe -A New Copernican Revolution?
Bio-Signatures -Rainbows May Reveal
...Isn't it Ford Prefect, not "Perfect"?
Kang...Thnx! Corrected the typo. Best, Casey
Posted by: Kang Woo Lee | July 13, 2007 at 02:30 AM