Image Credit: (NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI)
In 1966 astronomer Carl Sagan boldly announced that there were two important criteria for a planet to support life. The first was the right kind of star, and the second was a planet the right distance from that sun. At that time scientists calculated the odds of finding another planet like earth were one in a septillion (that is a 1 followed by 27 zeros). This makes the odds of winning the Powerball Lottery look like a sure thing. This did not discourage the marshaling of great scientific minds and resources to search for extraterrestrial life. This marked the beginning of a government-funded program called SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Today science has uncovered more than 200 known parameters required for a planet to support life making the odds of life occurring anywhere in the universe utterly staggering. Government funding of SETI was pulled in 1993 but continues its work with private funding.
Peter Schenkel, author of three books on extraterrestrial life and strong proponent of life on other planets, admitted in an interview in 2006 that due to recent scientific findings the earlier estimates “may no longer be tenable” and “it seems appropriate to put excessive euphoria to rest.” Setting aside the odds of any planet in our solar system supporting life, astrophysicists currently understand that if any of the fundamental forces of the universe, (gravity, electromagnetic force, and the strong and weak nuclear forces) were altered by more than 1 /10,000,000,000,000,000, no stars would have ever formed in our universe. The odds of the universe existing as we know it, and the odds of the universe producing a planet that supports life are simply ridiculous and beyond reason. Yet here we are, gazing at the universe from NASA’s James Webb Telescope, which is sending images back to a tiny blue planet teaming with life. We are all witnesses to this unimaginable miracle. We are all witnesses to its beauty.