Randon thought about life.

I was born in the mid 80s. That statement can mean a lot of things, but to me in means that I was born long after we discovered that Mars was not full of alien life plotting to attack Earth. Oh well. As far as we know, we are alone. It’s humbling to think about how large, vast, and relatively empty space is. It is full of billions and billions of stars, yet as of right now we hardly have the technology to travel to the nearest one, only about 4.5 light years away, and to get there it would take at least 40 years. Yet, despite the vastness of it all I can’t help but to feel excited about the prospects of exploring new worlds.

The first place many people think of when it comes to the future of human exploration in space is a manned mission to Mars. While this I exciting, there is something that, to me, is much more exciting. That would be a planet orbiting one of the two stars in Alpha Centauri. This planet would be a fantastic candidate for finding life outside of earth. There are currently several projects looking at Alpha Centauri for signs of a planet. According to some models, the only location for this planet would be in the “Goldilocks Zone,” the habitable (for life similar to what is on earth at least) zone for life.

Imagine if a planet were discovered there. We now know of hundreds of extrasolar planets, almost all have been discovered in the last 10 years. I’m sure we will discover hundreds more. What I want is life. Not bacteria, but full blown life, little critters running around doing whatever they do. It would be the most amazing scientific discovery ever. What would it look like? Would it be based off the same building blocks of life that we are? A good chunk of the amino acids that make us up are found in space, so it seems plausible that life has the potential so share some characteristics.

The only way to know for sure is to go there (be it Mars or Alpha Centauri) and see for ourselves. It will only take a little under 50 years to travel to Alpha Centauri and send a message home, so it is within the realm of possibility that we can find extrasolor life with in my lifetime. Who knows, we might even be able to eat them, which would be really odd on more than one level.

-Elijah Xavier