Whether or not we'll ever find irrefutable proof that humans are not alone in the universe is something that has been speculated about since the dawn of humanity.
As the scientific age arose — from first crude telescopes to modern space exploration — the idea that actually finding real proof has seemingly come into closer reach. Over the decades, astronomers and astrophysicists and the like have been taking all sorts of approaches to studying the galaxy, some of them in hopes of finding some kind of evidence of extraterrestrial life, whether a signal we can interpret or signs of life seen from afar by space telescopes, or microbes in the soil of some other planet or planetary body.
And the science has come really far. For instance, up until 1995, it was only predicted that other stars in the galaxy might have planets around them, like our Sun does, but now we've found more than 6,000 and it's looking like there are countless more.
That's because our telescopes are becoming more powerful, and our ability to sift through the data they collect is getting better all the time. And we've got things like rovers searching Mars for microbial proof and it suddenly doesn't seem all that far-fetched that the day will come when a news headline reads: Irrefutable proof of life beyond earth has been found.
But what happens then? And will irrefutable still be refuted by some? And what would the implications be, from shaking the foundations of some faiths, to adding a new global dynamic to an already tense world? We talk with two people who are part of a new limited-run podcast called "When We Find Them" that talks to people from all backgrounds to try to approach these questions and more.
The sixth and final episode of Season 1 of When We Find Them comes out on Oct. 28.
Guests:
Brendan Byrne, Assistant News Director at Central Florida Public Media, and the writer and host of "When We Find Them." Byrne also hosts "Are We There Yet?" and does space industry reporting for NPR.
Dr. Amy Williams, Associate Professor of Geology at University of Florida — her work focuses on Astrobiology, Geobiology, Organic Geochemistry, and Planetary Science and she's one of the voices in When We Find Them. Dr. Williams has been a member of the NASA Curiosity rover science team since 2009, and currently works with the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument team to explore the distribution of organic molecules on Mars’ surface. She also works with the NASA Perseverance rover science team.
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