Are We Alone In The Universe?
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 1 March 2024
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
It's a question that's been posed again and again. Carl Sagan posed it in the 1970s as a NASA mission scientist as the agency prepared to send its twin Viking landers to Mars.
And nearly 50 years after the first of two landers touched down on Mars, we're no closer to an answer as to whether there's life — out there.
Scientists haven't stopped looking. In fact, they've expanded their gaze to places like Saturn's largest moon, Titan and Jupiter's moon Europa.
The search for life beyond planet earth continues to captivate. And NASA has upcoming missions to both moons. Could we be closer to answering that question Carl Sagan asked some 50 years ago?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Are we alone in the universe? That question took on new meaning in the mid-1970s as |
| 0:07.2 | NASA prepared to send its twin Viking landers to Mars. |
| 0:11.8 | Is life everywhere? |
| 0:13.9 | Mission Scientist Carl Sagan speculated |
| 0:17.8 | on what Mars might have to teach us |
| 0:20.1 | in an NASA documentary previewing the mission. Well, there's no way for us ever to answer that question, |
| 0:24.8 | except by looking for life elsewhere. |
| 0:26.9 | And the nearest candidate planet is Shirley Morris. |
| 0:30.5 | The documentary also featured some more imaginative musings about what the Landers might discover. |
| 0:37.0 | Life forms on Mars may have silica shells to protect them against the radiation. |
| 0:42.0 | I can even imagine forms of life having leaf-like structures oriented by the sunlight, possibly of unusual colors. |
| 0:51.0 | Another solution to the problem of water might be an organism that eats rock. |
| 0:56.0 | Well in July, 1976, Mars Fever grew when the first of the two landers touched down on the red planet, we ran |
| 1:05.3 | near daily dispatches on all things considered. |
| 1:07.8 | Viking biologists have announced observations that might imply the presence of |
| 1:12.0 | life on Mars. |
| 1:13.0 | There could be algae growing on the rock. |
| 1:15.0 | Some of the rocks could actually be turtles. |
| 1:17.0 | Some of the little dots at the limit of resolution could be insects. |
| 1:21.0 | I don't know what a Martian looks like. |
| 1:24.8 | Do you? |
| 1:25.8 | For National Public Radio, this is Jim Louden at Viking Control Jeff Repulsion Laboratory. |
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