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be little better off than an ancient
Israelite scanning the skies in the
days of Moses. Even on a clear night
you couldn't count any more stars
than he did. Casual observation is of
little help in comprehending the di–
mensions ofouter space.
Of course, you couldn't help but
be inspired by the Milky Way ap–
pearing like a star-studded ribbon
across the sky, or by Orion and the
Big Dipper. But you would still be
baffied as to their size and their dis–
tance from the earth.
However, sorne men have always
looked at the starry heavens with
intelligent eyes. They began to no–
tice that a few of the heavenly bod–
ies moved in relation to the stars
and were closer to different stars at
different times. These wandering ce–
lestial bodies were termed
planetes
by the Greeks. We call them "plan–
ets" today.
Still men conceived of the earth
as the real center of the universe.
That is, until the research of Ni–
colaus Copernicus in the sixteenth
century. Knowing that the earth, in
fact, circled the sun, he postulated
that the sun was the probable center
of the universe.
Today knowledge about the uní–
verse is exploding at a fantastic, un–
imaginable rate. Sophisticated
spacecraft and highly sensitive radio
telescopes have revolutionized as–
tronomy and increased our desire to
solve the haunting question of
whether intelligent beings exist on
other worlds.
The fairly recent discovery of pul–
sars and quasars revealed that the
heavens are much more exciting,
mysterious and violent than we pre–
viously imagined in our wildest
dreams. Questions of origin and
etemity are intriguing man as never
before. He wonders why there is no
solid evidence of life on other plan–
ets. Mathematically speaking, the
odds often seem
in
its favor.
The Known Evldence
The recent Viking expedition to Mars
is just one more example of man's
intense interest in the possible discov–
ery of life beyond the confines of the
earth. In the summer of 1976, Ameri–
can scientists sent two highly sophis–
ticated spacecraft to the mysterious
red planet. Shortly after touchdown,
6
the Viking lander sent stunningly
clear pictures of the Martian surface
to radio telescopes on earth. Picture
after picture showed a stark, rock–
strewn surface which looked remark–
ably like a desert scene in the Ameri–
can Southwest.
One of our
Plain Truth
editors
talked with Dr. Gerald
A.
Soffen,
chief project scientist for the Viking
mission to Mars. When asked about
the chances for life on Mars, Dr.
Soffen said that odds were small,
but not
zero.
Though scientists are
still debating the data from the Vi–
king project, one did say that so far
nothing has been detected that
really could be considered biological
life. He concluded that Mars, like
the moon, Venus and Mercury, is a
very, very dead place.
Based on recent findings, scien-
Astronomers
have probed the
universe to a distance
of about 100,000 billion
billion miles.
Yet they have been
unable to find the
edge of the universe.
tists have speculated (and not with–
out evidence) that Mars once had
an earthlike atmosphere. They had
long suspected that the Martian sur–
face was the best locale to look for
life in our solar system. But notwith–
standing the fact that Mars is both
geologically and meteorologically
active, the evidence for biological
life is negative. And if there is no
life on the red planet, the chances
are virtuaUy
ni!
for life on Venus,
Mercury, Saturo, Jupiter, and Pluto.
Lite Beyond Our Solar System?
But what about life in the far-flung
"limits" of outer space?
In 1972 man's first attempt at writ–
ten communication with alien in–
telligence occurred when a special
aluminum plaque was attached to the
Pioneer lO space probe. This plaque
symbolically describes the origin of
the spacecraft as well as graphically
portraying a man and a woman.
The more recent Voyager probes,
now on their way to the outer limits
of our solar system, also carry re–
cordings of earth sounds.
lt
is
hoped
that extraterrestrial beings will
someday find these tiny spacecraft
and listen to our message.
But space probes are far less
likely to communicate with extra–
terrestrial life than radio telescopes
right here on earth. One good ex–
ample is the Goldstone radio tele–
scope near Barstow, California.
Here radio signals from sources in
outer space are being monitored by
means of a giant, steerable 210-foot
antenna. This awesome antenna has
actually communicated with the Vi–
king lander at a distance of over 200
million miles.
Incredible as it may seem, radio
telescopes can detect radio signals
from over ten million million billion
miles away. So scientists are con–
stantly listening for intelligible sig–
nals emanating from other galaxies
deep in the far-flung expanse of the
universe. Astronomers have been
hoping to detect such signals since
1960 when Frank Drake first used a
giant radio telescope to monitor ra–
dio waves from nearby stars.
Since then the sensitivity of such
equipment has grown enormously.
Astronomer Gerrit Verschuur re–
cently scanned ten nearby stars for
signs of life. His apparatus was so
sensitive that it could find in five
minutes what Drake's equipment
required twenty days to detect.
Yet up to this time, no unex–
pected signals from outer space
have ever been detected!
Still, man persists in probing the
universe with giant telescopes like
the one on Mount Wilson in South–
ern California. So far, using the
largest and most sophisticated tele–
scopes, astronomers have probed
the universe to a distance of about
100,000 billion billion miles. Yet as–
tronomers have been unable to find
the edge of the universe. Perhaps it
is endless; no one knows.
The Fortunate Generation
Our fascination with the mysteries
of the heavens is exceeded only by
our never-ending desire to under–
stand the fundamental question of
what this human experience is all
(Continued on page 41)
The
PLAIN TRUTH April 1978