There's no good evidence to date that life exists, or ever has existed, on worlds beyond the Earth — so it might seem odd that the field of science known as astrobiology is booming. Over the past decade or so, hundreds of biologists, geologists, chemists and astronomers have conducted research and attended conferences on astrobiology around the world, and NASA even has an Astrobiology Institute at its Ames Research Center in California.
That's because there's plenty to think about before we actually find alien life. What form, for example, is it likely to take? Where should we be looking, and how? How did life arise on Earth — was it pretty much inevitable, given the right conditions, or was it a one-in-a-billion kind of thing? Are there enough life-friendly planets out there to make the search worthwhile?(See the Hubble telescope's greatest hits.)
Thanks to progress on all of these questions and more, scientists tend to be more confident than ever that life does exist out in the universe — and First Contact, a book by Washington Post reporter and editor Marc Kaufman, is a powerful reminder of why. Take Princeton geologist Tullis Onstott, whose story, along with those of many others, Kaufman tells. In 1996 Onstott ventured deep into a South African gold mine. Tapping into rock a mile (1.6 km) below the surface, he extracted bacteria that were living cheerfully in harsh conditions completely isolated from the rest of the biosphere.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2066414,00.html#ixzz1KdXAQhfE
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