17 - Alone in a Crowded Universe

Summary

The next time you're outdoors on a clear night and away from city lights, look up at the sky and get a sense of its myriads of stars. Train your binoculars on the Milky Way and appreciate how many more stars escaped your naked eye. Then look at a photograph of the Andromeda nebula as seen through a powerful telescope to realize the enormous number of stars that escaped your binoculars as well. When all those numbers have sunk in, you're ready to ask: How many civilizations of intelligent beings like ourselves must be out there, looking back at us? How long before we are in communication with them, before we visit them or before we are visited?

Many scientists have tried to calculate the odds. Their efforts have spawned a whole new field of science termed exobiology – the sole scientific field whose subject matter has not yet been shown to exist. Since a summary of the calculations fills seven pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, what more could we learn by further speculation? I'll suggest, nevertheless, that woodpeckers offer a fresh perspective.

Exobiologists find the numbers in their subject matter encouraging. Billions of galaxies each have billions of stars. Many stars probably have one or more planets, and many of those planets probably have an environment suitable for life. Where suitable conditions exist, life will probably evolve eventually.