Tuesday, February 17, 2009

More Than One Fishbowl?

Former Vatican astrononomer Jesuit Fr George Coyne will discuss the possibility of life existing anywhere else in the Universe at a NASA forum in Silicon Valley this week.

The Register reports that Lynn Rothschild, astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center, will debate the topic with Fr Coyne at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.

The title of the discussion will be "Are We Alone? The Dance of the Fertile Universe".

NASA has been on the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life since the 1960s, The Register says. More prosaicly Nasa's missions as a rule keep a look out for life, or at least the building blocks of life, while tearing around the solar system.

The Catholic Church "perhaps surprisingly" says The Register, is also open to the idea of life on other planets, with the current head of the Vatican observatory, Fr. José Gabriel Funes, S.J. conceding the possibility of extra-terrestrial life last May.

Link (here)

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