Death from the Skies! by Philip Plait Ph. D

Author:Philip Plait, Ph. D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

THAT’S LIFE

No matter where you go on the Earth, you find life.

On the plains, on mountaintops, high in the air, down to the deepest ocean depths, life abounds. Even far underground, microscopic life has adapted to conditions we would consider lethal. Life is everywhere.

Earth seems marvelously tuned to support life, but that’s an illusion: we are the ones who are in fact tuned by evolution, as are all the other forms of life on, below, and above the Earth’s surface. As the Earth has changed over the eons, so has life. It seems almost inevitable that, once life first got its start on Earth, it would flourish.

We know there are other planets in our solar system, and even orbiting other stars. If life is so plentiful here, it stands to reason it may also be on those other worlds. They may teem with simple microorganisms, and it’s possible that there could also be more complex forms of life in space, things that we would recognize as intelligent.

If that were so, what would they think of us? Would they be a threat to us?

To understand that, we’ll start by taking a short journey backward in time—though my definition of “short” may differ a bit from yours.

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