The Possibility of Life

Praise for The Possibility of Life“An utterly gripping, endlessly surprising voyage.”—Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams “Thoughtful, witty, and profound, Jaime Green has crafted a dazzling feat of imagination and synthesis that had me hooked from the first page.”—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World“A fascinating and thoughtful reminder of the fact that we may not be alone. Highly recommended.” —Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author of Annihilation“The Possibility of Life left me dizzy with awe and brimming with hope. Green is a steadfast, witty, and charming guide through this cosmic murk.”—Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures“Jaime Green casts her gaze deep into the universe for the possibilities of extraterrestrial life but, at the same time, looks deep into us, too, into our humanity and our history and into why we even want to look for that life in the first place. An accessible, weird, funny, and ultimately illuminating look into the search for life beyond our world.”—Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Aftermath“Jaime Green’s captivating debut transformed this earthbound human obsessed with concrete answers into a conscious animal who revels in immortal scientific mysteries.”—Alexis Coe, New York Times bestselling author of You Never Forget Your First“Every page of this book makes our shared universe feel larger and more interesting than ever before, a true gift of fascinating science and engrossing storytelling.”—Matt Bell, author of Appleseed Jaime Green is a science writer, essayist, editor, and teacher, and she is series editor of The Best American Science and Nature Writing. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia, and her writing has appeared in Slate, Popular Science, New York Times Book Review, American Theatre, Catapult, Astrobites, and elsewhere. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and son.www.JaimeGreen.net The Possibility of LifeJaime GreenSCIENCE, IMAGINATION, and OUR QUEST for KINSHIP in THE COSMOS In memory of my Zaide, Norman Epner. And for Miles Nova, everything new. ContentsWatchful StarsChapter 1: OriginsChapter 2: PlanetsChapter 3: AnimalsChapter 4: PeopleChapter 5: TechnologyChapter 6: ContactHopeful MonstersAcknowledgmentsBibliographyIndex Watchful StarsWhen I was very little, I was scared of the night sky. I remember hurrying from my parents’ car to the front door so that I wouldn’t be out in the open too long. I felt like the stars were watching me.But soon enough, the sky became a friendlier place. My dad taught me the names of the constellations and how to find the North Star pouring off the tip of the Big Dipper (a real feat in the light-polluted skies of Queens). And then, a few years later, the idea of a vast cosmos became a promise, not a threat, because it might be full of benevolent creatures. What happened was I started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation.Those are the first aliens I remember—well, the first I remember loving, because I was terrified of ET—but quickly my world became full of them. Kind Starfleet officers with minor prosthetics to differentiate them from their human colleagues; the sandworms of Arrakis; glowing deep-sea angels in The Abyss; Meg Murry’s beloved Aunt Beast. There were bad guys and monsters, but there was so much hope, too. And while pop culture was populating my imaginary worlds, the science I learned in school and from PBS specials watched on playdates with equally nerdy friends was expanding my sense of what was possible. Rovers landed on Mars, SETI listened for signals, and, around when I was twelve years old, the first planets beyond our solar system were found.Thinking about aliens was in some ways the same thing as thinking about science. Looking at a star and imagining planets around it was the same as imagining who might live there. Learning about space-time and the hard limit of light speed was the same as imagining ways to subvert these laws to traverse the galaxy, was the same as thinking about my friends on the Enterprise who already had. Thinking about aliens was thinking about whether life really needed water and carbon, or eyes and hands. Thinking about aliens who might be plants or bugs was thinking about the possible inner life of the plants and bugs in my backyard.But it was more, of course. Thinking about who might be out there was thinking about the possibilities of existence, and how humans fit into all of it.Some people are drawn to science by their drive to understand, but what I have always loved most is how science shows us what we don’t know, how little we understand of the world even as we’re inextricably a part of it. I didn’t want to answer questions but discover mysteries instead—mysteries with tantalizing possibilities, theories and hypotheses and whispers of the truth.Science reveals that our world is so much more than what we see every day. There are cells churning beneath our skin, bizarre ecosystems hidden at the bottom of the ocean, and clockwork mysteries ticking away in an atom’s heart. But space offers possibly infinite real estate for wonder. In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope aimed its mirrored eye at a dark spot in the constellation Ursa Major; it found, in this empty patch of sky, nearly three thousand galaxies. This photograph, the Hubble Deep Field, has always captivated me: clouds and spirals scattered in silver, amber, and red—an impossible richness you could blot out if you held your thumb up to the sky.We’re now at the brink of being able to answer questions that have obsessed humans since we’ve known how to ask. Does life exist beyond what we know? Is life in the cosmos common, rare, or even unique? Are we alone?Except we’ve felt that we’re on the brink of these answers for decades. As science makes concrete progress—telling us more about the planets around other stars, delving into the workings of the human brain—the big answers seem held on the tip of the universe’s tongue. Scientists who scan