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THE
COSMIC
CONNECTION
15 MAN ALONE?
by
Robert A. Ginskey
"Somewhere across space giant instruments, handled by
strange manipulative organs, may stare vainly at our
1/oating cloud wrack, their owners yearning as we yearn. "
mid the excitement and cele–
bration of July 4. 1976. a his–
torie and inlriguing evént
will take place o n the p lanel Mars.
Afler a half-billion-milc journey,
the intricate spacecraft, Viking, will
descend to thc Martian surface and
begin an un precedented probe: an
ext raterres tria l sea rch for life.
lf all goes accord.ing to plan, U.S.
te l evis ion v iewe r s s h o uld see
closeup and pa noram ic s t ill pho to–
graphs of the Martian surface
within hours after the Viking wu–
ches down. But more important will
be the xesu lts of soph isticated ex–
periments designed to detcct life on
the surface of the red pla ne t.
If mankind shou ld receive hard
evidence that li fe exists e lsewhere in
the so lar system, tha t s tartling reve–
lation would be well worth the $ 1
bi Ilion cost. lndeed. th e de tecting of
ext rate rrestria l li fe would undoubt–
edly be th e most dramatic and
The
PLAIN TRUTH June 1976
- Loren Eiseley,
The lmmense Journey
profound di scovery of recorded his–
lory.
The Viking mission to Mars is the
la tes t in a series o f probes designed
lo answer o ne o f mankind's most
pe rsisten! and provocative ques–
tions: ls man alone in the universe?
ls li fe unique to the earth?
For millennia, man has mused
over his place in the cosmos. The
Cope rnican revolul ion 500 years
a·go changed man's conception of
his physical location in the unive rse.
But o nl y recently, with the in–
ven ti on o f powerful space-age rock–
cts and the deve lopment of hig hl y
sensitive radio telescopes, has he
been able to take positive stc ps
towa rd resolving the question .of
whether li fe exists on other worlds.
A Message from Man
Man's first
writlen
at tempt to com–
municate with a li en intelligence oc–
cur red in 1972, whe n a special
aluminum plaque was attached to
the Pioneer 10 space probe. Pioneer
10 was primarily designed to send
back information abou t the planet
Jupit e r , but unlikc a ll previous
spacccraft , Pioneer 1O has a traj ec–
to ry that wi ll evenlually carry it
completely out o f the solar system a l
a vcloci ty of about 70.000 m il es per
hour. This is faster than any prc–
vio us man-madc obj ect.
The . mall plaque carried by Pio–
neer lO symbolically describes lh e
origin of the spacecraft. and, among
otber things, it portrays a pictoria l
representation of a ma n and a
woman .
But what are the odd that in–
te lligent beings cxist in other re–
gions of lh e heavens? ls it likely? Or
a re the cha nces vanishing ly small?
Calcu la ting lhe proba bility th at
man is not a lo ne in the universe
invo lves numerous factors (see box).
Yet many scientists. as well as lay-
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