Natural Philosopy I
30 November 07
I was asked the question the other day, as to whether it would really make any difference to my life if microbes were found on Mars. Inarticulate with apoplexy, I spouted some pomposity about my “life’s work” (astrobiology being a term I heard for the first time three years ago by the way) and “permanant funding made available”. I may have used the term “gravy train”. None of those responses really answer the question though – would it change the way I saw the world? And the world in this case means Life, the Universe and Everything.
Let’s rewind back to the year 1996. A meteorite found 12 years previously in the Allen Hills of Antarctica is revealed as a 4.5 billion year old fragment of Martian crust and what’s more, hosts a slew of internal structures which look suspiciously similar to bacteria-like forms. President Clinton makes a formal televised announcement to mark the event. Does this change the world? No. Was I aware of it at the time? I don’t think so. Now maybe at the age of 16 my head was so far up my arse that I wouldn’t have noticed an alien lifeform if it shook me by the hand and asked me to take it to my leader. And as it turns out maybe we can’t be sure the structures shown here really do represent fossilized forms of ancient life for reasons of size, composition and a host of other highly scientific and very controversial arguments. That’s not the point.
The point IS that I’ve taken the presence of other life in the Universe as a given for as long as I can remember. Angels, ghosts, aliens, UFOs? No, no, yes, no. Microbes on Mars don’t change my worldview because they already fit in it.
Whether other lifeforms exist in a galaxy far far away or whether they’re in the cosmic equivalent of the neighbours’ backyard is the question. And if it turns out that they are close by, did they grow there or are they just the remnants of some junk that got tossed over the wall a few billion years back?
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