The search for extraterrestrial life

The search for intelligent life has been a dream of science fiction. The Star Trek television series started each episode with the prologue "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."
Establishing a technologically advanced society has a great number of special requirements. We have been able to achieve this because we live in an oxygen atmosphere where we can make fire that makes it possible to smelt metals. Our manual dexterity enables us to manipulate objects easily and to build tools. Had we been relegated to the realm of the sea with flippers instead of hands with opposable thumbs, even with all our brain power we would not have been able to build the technology to send a probe to another world. The Neanderthals who preceded us were able to use fire for cooking and for warmth, but in the 250,000 years that they were on Earth they did not advance beyond the stone age. Modern humans have existed for about 60,000 years, and civilizations were only established 10,000 years ago. In the last 250 years, our industrialization has managed to pollute the atmosphere to the point that we may trigger a global warming event within a couple of hundred years and cause the extinction of many species, perhaps even our own.
Learn more about the evolution of life on Earth
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