Something Incredible Waiting to Be Known
The search for intelligent life reaches farther than any NASA mission
In the search for life beyond Earth, questions of biology blur into something bigger. We slip from questions of molecules arranging themselves into life to questions of humanity and meaning — what is life, what is intelligence — and philosophy. What does it mean if we’re alone? What does it mean if we aren’t? NASA sends probes to comets and planets and moons to look for organic molecules, the chemical signatures of life or at least its possibility, but there is also the big gun, the moon shot: SETI—the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It’s a different process, different science, but the hope of its quarry also carries vastly different meaning. I don’t think alien microbes, astonishing as they’d be, would make us any less alone in the cosmos. SETI isn’t a search for company, though. It’s a search for signals.
In the 1997 film Contact, Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) wears headphones while sitting atop the hood of her car, parked in a field of radio telescopes, scanning the sky. She hears static resolving into a signal. “Holy shit,” she whispers. Then she’s screaming. But the signal is louder than her yelps: It’s a rhythmic whoosh with an electronic whine. Because this is a movie, she knows right away that it must be an alien…
