"The idea that we are the only intelligent creatures in a cosmos
of a hundred billion galaxies is so preposterous that there are very
few astronomers today who would take it seriously. It is safest to
assume therefore, that they are out there and to consider the manner in
which this may impinge upon human society."
Arthur C. Clarke, physicist and author of 2001: A Space Odyssey
“It is critical to know what to look for in the search for life in the
solar system. The search so far has focused on Earth-like life because
that’s all we know, but life that may have originated elsewhere could
be unrecognizable compared with life here. Advances throughout the
last decade in biology and biochemistry show that the basic
requirements for life might not be as concrete as we thought.”
John Baross - Professor of Oceanography and the Astrobiology Program at the University of Washington and lead author U.S. National Research Council report: “The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems”
"We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence."
Vernor Vinge, Hugo Award-winning author of A Fire Upon the Deep and Rainbows End, as well as the 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate.
"The Earth is not a freak speck around a freak star in a freak galaxy, lost in an immense 'unfeeling' whirlpool of stars and galaxies hurtling in time and space ever since the Big Bang. The Earth is part, together with trillions of other Earth-like bodies, of a cosmic cloud of 'vital dust' that exists because the universe is what it is.
Christian de Duve - Nobel-Prize -winning biochemist and author of Vital Dust -Life as a Cosmic Imperative.
"The universe could so easily have remained lifeless and simple -just physics and chemistry, just the scattered dust of the cosmic explosion that gave birth to time and space. The fact that it did not -the fact that life evolved out of literally nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved literally out of nothing -is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. And even that is not the end of the matter. Not only did evolution happen: it eventually led to beings capable of comprehending the process by which they comprehend it."
Richard Dawkins -famed Oxford evolutionary biologist reflecting on the sheer wonder of the emergence of life on Earth and the evolutionary process in his classic The Ancestor's Tale.
“How can a speck of a universe be physically identical to the great expanse we view in the heavens above?”
Brian Greene, The world's leading string theorist, Professor of Physics at Columbia University and author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space. Time. And the Texture of Reality.
"It would be hard to believe that the continuous movement of tectonic plates has no effect on the development of life on Earth."
James Trefil, physicist and author of Other Worlds: The Solar System and Beyond?
According to Harvard scientists, habitable worlds are most likely found on large, rocky planets that are up to ten times the size of Earth and contain plate tectonics.
"The idea that we are the only intelligent creatures in a cosmos
of a hundred billion galaxies is so preposterous that there are very
few astronomers today who would take it seriously. It is safest to
assume therefore, that they are out there and to consider the manner in
which this may impinge upon human society."
Arthur C. Clarke, physicist and author of 2001: A Space Odyssey
“It is critical to know what to look for in the search for life in the
solar system. The search so far has focused on Earth-like life because
that’s all we know, but life that may have originated elsewhere could
be unrecognizable compared with life here. Advances throughout the
last decade in biology and biochemistry show that the basic
requirements for life might not be as concrete as we thought.”
John Baross - Professor of Oceanography and the Astrobiology Program at the University of Washington and lead author U.S. National Research Council report: “The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems”
"We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence."
Vernor Vinge, Hugo Award-winning author of A Fire Upon the Deep and Rainbows End, as well as the 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate.
"The Earth is not a freak speck around a freak star in a freak galaxy, lost in an immense 'unfeeling' whirlpool of stars and galaxies hurtling in time and space ever since the Big Bang. The Earth is part, together with trillions of other Earth-like bodies, of a cosmic cloud of 'vital dust' that exists because the universe is what it is.
Christian de Duve - Nobel-Prize -winning biochemist and author of Vital Dust -Life as a Cosmic Imperative.
"The universe could so easily have remained lifeless and simple -just physics and chemistry, just the scattered dust of the cosmic explosion that gave birth to time and space. The fact that it did not -the fact that life evolved out of literally nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved literally out of nothing -is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. And even that is not the end of the matter. Not only did evolution happen: it eventually led to beings capable of comprehending the process by which they comprehend it."
Richard Dawkins -famed Oxford evolutionary biologist reflecting on the sheer wonder of the emergence of life on Earth and the evolutionary process in his classic The Ancestor's Tale.
“How can a speck of a universe be physically identical to the great expanse we view in the heavens above?”
Brian Greene, The world's leading string theorist, Professor of Physics at Columbia University and author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space. Time. And the Texture of Reality.
"It would be hard to believe that the continuous movement of tectonic plates has no effect on the development of life on Earth."
James Trefil, physicist and author of Other Worlds: The Solar System and Beyond?
According to Harvard scientists, habitable worlds are most likely found on large, rocky planets that are up to ten times the size of Earth and contain plate tectonics.
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