2005 : WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?
Theoretical physicist; cosmologist; astro-biologist; co-Director of BEYOND, Arizona State University; principle investigator, Center for the Convergence of Physical Sciences and Cancer Biology; Author, The Eerie Silence and The Cosmic Jackpot
Physicist, Macquarie University, Sydney; Author, How to Build a Time Machine
One of the biggest of the Big Questions of existence is, Are we alone in the universe? Science has provided no convincing evidence one way or the other. It is certainly possible that life began with a bizarre quirk of chemistry, an accident so improbable that it happened only once in the entire observable universe—and we are it. On the other hand, maybe life gets going wherever there are earthlike planets. We just don't know, because we have a sample of only one. However, no known scientific principle suggests an inbuilt drive from matter to life. No known law of physics or chemistry favors the emergence of the living state over other states. Physics and chemistry are, as far as we can tell, "life blind."
Yet I don't believe that life is a freak event. I think the universe is teeming with it. I can't prove it; indeed, it could be that mankind will never know the answer for sure. If we find life in our solar system, it most likely got there from Earth (or vice versa) in rocks kicked off planets by comet impacts. And to go beyond the solar system is the stuff of dreams. The best hope is that we develop instruments sensitive enough to detect life on extra-solar planets from Earth orbit. But, whilst not impossible, this is a formidable technical challenge.
So why do I think we are not alone, when we have no evidence for life beyond Earth? Not for the fallacious popular reason: "the universe is so big there must be life out there somewhere." Simple statistics shows this argument to be bogus. If life is in fact a freak chemical event, it would be so unlikely to occur that it wouldn't happen twice among a trillion trillion trillion planets. Rather, I believe we are not alone because life seems to be a fundamental, and not merely an incidental, property of nature. It is built into the great cosmic scheme at the deepest level, and therefore likely to be pervasive. I make this sweeping claim because life has produced mind, and through mind, beings who do not merely observe the universe, but have come to understand it through science, mathematics and reasoning. This is hardly an insignificant embellishment on the cosmic drama, but a stunning and unexpected bonus. Somehow life is able to link up with the basic workings of the cosmos, resonating with the hidden mathematical order that makes it tick. And that's a quirk too far for me.
