Are we alone?

WHILE IT HAS been conclusively established that the Earth is the only planet in the solar system supporting rich and widely diverging species of life, scientists had so far found it extremely difficult to ascertain whether life either as it is known to us or in other forms exists on the planets in the other stellar systems. It was not even known whether these systems had orbiting planets. There was no question, therefore, of our being able to pick them out. The enormous distances to which the other stars had been hurled away from the solar system - with Sirius, the nearest star being about four and a half light years away - had so far left at a dead end questions about whether life as it is known to us or in other forms exists on the other planets orbiting the stars. With the Sun itself having to take its place as a none-too-bright star in comparison with other far more brilliant and resplendent stellar presences, it could be safely presumed that they have their planetary systems. But it has not so far been possible to pick them out because the several million kilometres at which the stars are scattered in space had made the planets indistinguishable by merging them with the stars around which they are orbiting. The Sun, when seen from the planets of other distant stellar systems, would look like nothing more than a very small star on the night sky with all its planets squeezed into that tiny twinkling dot with superb cosmic excellence.

The galloping pace of science and technology has, however, now enabled the astronomers to identify the planets in the other stellar systems. They have sorted out nine of them orbiting a star in the Vela constellation and they were discovered by a team led by Prof. Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory from study of the ``wobbles'' in the star caused by the gravitational pull of the planets. The detection of more planets in the stellar systems coming almost in a stampede has been foreseen by Dr. Geoffrey Marcy. This gives us just a glimpse of the breath-taking advance of technology in view of the fact that scientists, not long ago, had given up all hopes of being able to make even a guess about whether the other stars have planetary systems.

Scientists who have now prised open the stellar systems which had so far hidden themselves in their blinding brightness and brought to light their planetary systems have to answer the nagging question about the existence of life in any of them. An earlier estimate that the space so far explored has as many as two billion stars indicated the definite possibility of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe even if it was limited to not more than two to five per cent of the galactic planetary systems. This should take the enquiry further to matters relating to the evolution of life on the planets of the other galaxies. If it is presumed that the presence of an atmosphere with oxygen is imperative for the evolution of life as we know it, the scientists who have discovered the new planets will have to find out whether they hold out such a hope. The questions do not end there. We do not yet know whether other forms of life, wholly unknown to us, have evolved without oxygen as an indispensable presence. If the scientists could track the planets of the distant stellar systems, it would not be long before they find out that we along with the other species of life on Planet Earth are not alone in the universe. Such a finding will make it stranger than all the science fiction so far written. It could well be the most unsettling discovery since Galileo shocked the Church a few centuries ago when he found out that the Earth goes around the Sun with the other planets and not the other way round.

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Section  : Opinion
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