1964 Awake! - Theocratic Collector.com

DOES intelligent life exist in
outer space? Sciencefiction
writers have long been
writing fantastic stories about
"people" on other planets. However,
much more reliable scientists
have now begun to talk
seriously about the possibility
that life will be found elsewhere
in the universe.
Fordham University chemist
Bartholomew Nagy recently led
a team that thought it had
found microscopic fossil life
forms in a meteorite that fell
in France a hundred years ago.
Spectacular newspaper reports
termed this positive proof of
extraterrestrial life. However,
they did not give equal space to
the fact that other scientists
pointedly disagreed.
Scientists have conferred
with a U.S. Congressional committee
on the possibility that
life could be found on other
planets. The principal conclusion
at the time was that even
if material life does exist else·
where, no one was willing to
spend the fantastic sums of
money that would be necessary
to get in touch with it.
Other Kinds of Life
V. Axel Firsoff, writing in
the British scientific publica.
tion Discovery, said astrono.mers
have considered "the
problem of life beyond the
Earth . . . strictly from the
narrow viewpoint of terrestrial
organisms . . . it is beginning
to be widely felt that this one·
sided approach has become out·
dated." Scientists no longer
SEPTEMBER 8, 1964
think all life must be our kind
of oxygen·breathing, water·
drinking life. Firsoff proposes
"only one selected alternative
scheme of 'pseudo·organic
chemistry' in which liquid am·
monia replaces water." He says
many other possibilities exist,
but suggests that ammonia in
the atmosphere of the giant
planets and perhaps on some of
their satellites could support
this kind of life. "Jovian animals,"
he says, "could breathe
nitrogen and drink liquid am·
monia. Whether they do remains
to be seen."
Dr. Ralph E. Lapp, special
editor of the Bulletin 0/ the
Atomic Scienti8ts, thinks the
places where life may exist are
too far away for man ever to
reach. The still theoretical ion
rocket may someday be used to
attain the fantastic velocity of
a hundred miles a second. But
even at that speed our closest
stellar neighbor in space, Alpha
Centauri, is eight thousand
years away! Since it is not imaginable
that man couId travel
such distances, Lapp proposes
we listen for them. He thinks
he knows what radio frequen·
cies an intelligent society would
use to communicate from remote
space-frequencies close
to the 21-centimeter hydrogen
note. In 1960 the U.S. National
Radio Astronomy Observatory
near Greenbank, West Virginia,
tried listening to two of the
nearest stars, but without initial
success. Lapp thinks an intelligent
society could send an
understandable message to