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In the past few decades the human species has begun, seriously and systematically, to look for evidence of life elsewhere. While no one has yet found living organisms beyond the earth, there are some reasons to be encouraged. Robotic space probes have identified worlds where life may once have gained a toehold, even if it does not flourish there today. The Galileo spacecraft found clear signs of life during its recent flight past the earth—a reassurance that we really do know how to sniff out at least certain kinds of life. And rapidly accumulating evidence strongly suggests that the universe abounds with planetary systems something like our own.
In practice, the community of scientists concerned with finding life elsewhere in the solar system has contented itself with a chemical approach. Human beings, as well as every other organism on the earth, are based on liquid water and organic molecules. (Organic molecules are carbon-containing compounds other than carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.) A modest search strategy— looking for necessary if not sufficient criteria—might then begin by looking for liquid water and organic molecules. Of course, such a protocol might miss forms of life about which we are wholly ignorant, but that does not mean we could not detect them by other methods. If a silicon-based gira›e had walked by the Viking Mars landers, its portrait would have been taken.
