Rosicrucian Heritage Magazine - 2009-03 - AMORC

In recent years there has been much
talk about the possibility of life on other
planets in our solar system. I am not referring
to the popular belief in extra-terrestrial beings
regularly visiting earth, or the occasional alien
abduction here or there. This belief has been with
us primarily since the 1950’s when the possibility of
space travel first entered popular imagination. And
whereas some factual experience may accompany
the belief, the vast majority of sightings of socalled
“extraterrestrial beings” are false, and/or
fraudulent.
That we would ever find little green men from
Mars or any other planet in our solar system, for
that matter, is pretty well ruled out by now. From
2
Life on Other Worlds
by Sven Johansson, FRC
The Rosicrucian Heritage -- No: 1, 2009
the information gathered and analysed from the
various space probes that have penetrated almost
the entire solar system by now, there seem to
be only a few planets and moons left that could
possibly have life on them, and without doubt,
most of these will no longer be candidates in but a
few decades from now.
Of course we can no longer be too fussy
about what sort of life we may find. The popular
imagination accepted for decades the possibility of
finding other life forms like our own, only to have
their hopes dismantled one by one, until now, it
would be sufficient if we could just find some algae,
bacteria or even simpler life forms. Whatever form
of life we eventually do find in our solar system,
if indeed we find any at all, will almost certainly
exclude anything much larger than microbes.
What we have come to realise over the past
four decades, and especially from deep-sea
research, is that life can exist in exceedingly harsh
environments; indeed, it seems to fit in wherever a
suitable energy source exists. So, we find enormous
clams and tube-worms several metres long, living
in the vicinity of many deep-sea hydrothermal
vents. The sun’s light does not penetrate to these
creatures, and their survival depends entirely
upon the radioactive heat of the earth itself. There
are great mats of living algae floating in scalding
hot water around hot springs throughout the
world. And finally, we have even discovered
algae growing in porous rock at high latitudes that
seldom get warmer than -20 degrees Centigrade.
Certainly, primitive life is tougher than we ever
imagined.