We’ll Find We’re Not Alone – a poem by Kate Rauner

 

Hydrothermal vents are able to support extremophile bacteria on Earth and may also support life in other parts of the cosmos.

We will find we’re not alone,

The proof is at our finger tips.

We have the means, robotic craft

Extend our touch on epic trips.

We know where round the Sun to look,

Know how to search for traces.

Moons and planets wait for us,

Within our reach are many places.

No wormholes, warping space required,

No need for hyperdrives.

Technology is here today

To find unearthly lives.

With chemistries like ours – or strange,

Not likely grays or bug-eyed men,

Expected small, but bodies huge

Are not beyond imagining.

Mars only lost his oceans

A million years ago.

Solar winds stripped air away,

And with it, oceans go.

But liquid water blankets

Some moons of Jupiter.

Beneath their crusts of ice,

Hordes of life may stir.

To feed on broth by magma brewed

May be an easy strategy.

Get energy not from the Sun,

But twisted tides of gravity.

Ganymede,

Europa,

And Callisto,

Or methane lakes on Titan,

Life free from H2O.

Geysers may toss microbes high,

Bouquets to passing hands,

Till we can pierce a mile of ice

To meet them in their lands.

To find that life is commonplace

Will not diminish me,

But will expand my mind and soul

And all that I can be.

“I believe we are going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth in the next decade and definitive evidence in the next 10 to 20 years,” Ellen Stofan, chief scientist for NASA, said at a public panel Tuesday in Washington. “We know where to look, we know how to look, and in most cases we have the technology.” latimes.com

That would be amazing, astounding, awesome… and that’s just the “a” words I can think of. Extraterrestrial life is discussed in many places, for example, solarsystem.nasa.gov , jpl.nasa.gov , or wikipedia extraterrestrial life

For me, even a real microbe will be better than all the movies put together – reality always trumps fantasy.