Alien Life: Fiction Becoming A Reality?

                                                   

           

Alien life has fascinated humans since our own awareness that such a thing could exist. And with the recent discovery of an Earth-Like planet around a star in our cosmic backyard, tantalizing new questions are being raised about the possibility of finding life elsewhere in the universe.

NASA's Kepler mission has thus far found thousands of exo-planets, of which approximately 40 are believed to be in or near the "Goldilocks Zone" — a just-right spot in orbit around a star where it's neither too hot nor too cold to support life as we know it. Now, scientists have found such a planet orbiting a star down our own cosmic "block" — a possible rocky planet around Proxima Centauri, our closest star. They have christened it Proxima b.

Proxima Centauri is a mere 4.22 light-years away from Earth. It is a red dwarf, which is the fate that awaits our own sun in about 4 billion years. Measurements indicate that Proxima b is a rocky planet, just slightly larger than Earth, orbiting the star at the right distance to be able to support liquid water on its surface, and thus perhaps life.

                                               

(Artist Rendition of Earth-like Alien Planet,Proxima b orbiting the star Proxima Centauri)

I believe that there is life all over our universe, since it would be the height of arrogance to think that we are alone. Moreover, I believe that at some point, life on Earth will die out, either from natural causes, or from our own doing. To me, this is a natural progression, just like individual lives on our planet. Unlike many people, including several of my astronaut colleagues, I don't think that technology will save us. Indeed, there are strong arguments that after enabling life to thrive, technology is now hastening our collective demise. But that discussion is for another time.

Life is always starting in some parts of the universe at the same time that it is dying out in others. We don't know about each other, simply because the distances are so vast. To send a spacecraft even just to our next-door neighbor Proxima Centauri, using humans currents travel technology, would take almost 80,000 years. So, we won't easily find evidence of alien life around another star, especially those that are hundreds of millions of light-years away, or more.