ABSTRACT

We must now consider one of the most interesting and intriguing problems posed by astronomy, a problem to which the study of certain close binary systems and more recently the chemistry of meteorites and the pictures of the Martian surface obtained by Mariner 7 has now provided at least a provisional and encouraging answer. For several thousand years the various religions and superstitions of the world taught that Man is alone in the universe, that only upon this one planet, which is but one of countless millions within the universe, has thinking life evolved. Even as recently as the beginning of the present century scarcely any evidence existed in support of the possibility that life might have come into being elsewhere than on Earth. Even with the understanding that the Sun is a very ordinary star, the idea of extraterrestrial life was disregarded by most astronomers, such a belief being influenced a great deal by the then current theories of the evolution of our planetary system, which suggested that is was more a freak of nature than a fairly common occurrence.