The Secret Of Life Does Not Lie

Imagine A Civilisation That's Way In Advance Of Us Wants To Communicate With Us, And Assist Us In Our Development. The Information We Provide To Them Must Reflect Our Highest Aspirations And Ideals, And Not Just Be Some Crazy Person's Bizarre Politics Or Religion.

What We Want Is Another Sample Of Life, Which Is Not On Our Tree Of Life At All. All Life That We've Studied So Far On Earth Belongs To The Same Tree. We Share Genes With Mushrooms And Oak Trees And Fish And Bacteria That Live In Volcanic Vents And So On That It's All The Same Life Descended From A Common Origin. What We Want Is A Second Tree Of Life. We Want Alien Life, Alien Not Necessarily In The Sense Of Having Come From Space, But Alien In The Sense Of Belonging To A Different Tree Altogether. That Is What We're Looking For, "life 2.0."

Perhaps The Best Motivation For Going To Mars Is Political. It Is Obvious That No Single Nation Currently Has Either The Will Or The Resources To Do It Alone, But A Consortium Of Nations And Space Agencies Could Achieve It Within 20 Years.

In Science, A Healthy Skepticism Is A Professional Necessity, Whereas In Religion, Having Belief Without Evidence Is Regarded As A Virtue.

Science May Explain The World, But We Still Have To Explain Science. The Laws Which Enable The Universe To Come Into Being Spontaneously Seem Themselves To Be The Product Of Exceedingly Ingenious Design. If Physics Is The Product Of Design, The Universe Must Have A Purpose, And The Evidence Of Modern Physics Suggests Strongly To Me That The Purpose Includes Us