Is there anybody out there? For centuries human beings have been wondering. As we've gained greater understanding of the universe, however, our searches have taken on a more concrete form. Questions about aliens have become a subject for science rather than science fiction and philosophy.
Now a new cooperation (合作) between the Very Large Array observatory in New Mexico and the privately funded Seti Institute in California could mean that our curiosity about aliens is closer than ever before to being satisfied. Data from the VLA's 28 giant radio telescopes will be fed through a special supercomputer that will search for distant signals. Scientists who work at the Seti Institute said the announcement means their research is now "almost mainstream".
How likely it is that a signal will be found, and what this might mean, are hard questions to answer. Seti's existing projects haven't detected any life signals from other planets so far. But recent discoveries in space and Earth sciences have provided some encouragement to those who are enthusiastic about the likelihood, however remote, of detecting other civilizations.
While once it was thought that our solar system could be unique, since the discovery of the first exoplanet (a planet in another solar system) in the 1990s, thousands more have been located (确定位置). Around one in five stars are now thought to have a planet in their orbit in a so-called “habitable zone"—that is at a distance from the star where the temperature (neither too hot nor too cold) means that life is theoretically feasible.
If there is another life form somewhere, could it be as intelligent as us? Or cause a risk to us, as the physicist Stephen Hawking once warned? As investigations of Mars continue, our interest in the possibility of alien life appears clear—especially when conditions in our own earth appear even more unstable.
