George M. Church Quotes

NASA, and all the other spacefaring nations of the world, have agreed to a set of 'planetary-protection' principles, aimed at preventing the accidental contamination of another habitable world with organisms from Earth.

We're being very careful that we don't send a spacecraft to Mars with the intention of detecting Martian life - and find out that we detected the Earth life that we took with us.

In the future we're going to have interplanetary, we're going to have two planets that human beings are living on.

The book that blew the doors off the house, grabbing me with its breathtakingly deep and irresistible view of the universe and our relation to it, was 'Intelligent Life in the Universe' by I. S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan. I recall an enchanting all-nighter completing a college homework assignment to read the first chapter.

Are we alone? Many, many people on planet Earth want to know. We are on the cusp of being able to answer that question... because of the investments we're making in space technology.

Just speaking for myself, I think the return of people to the Moon has a lot to offer for understanding the formation and evolution of terrestrial worlds; so would the exploration of near-Earth asteroids by people.

Sciences are being unified by the search for life in the universe.

A lot of the science fiction that I grew up reading was written when we still thought that Venus might be an oceanic planet.

Galactic plankton is undoubtedly out there, but it's statistically highly likely there's also another intelligent civilisation out there somewhere. Unfortunately, the distances and time differences are so great, communication might remain impossible.

Life outside of Earth is probably going to be really hard to find.

I believe there's life on other planets, but I don't believe that UFOs are saucers from another world.

I think obviously there is some kind of life form somewhere else. Whether it looks like the creature in 'Alien Autopsy,' I'm not sure.

There's a world of insights to be gained into human health and disease by understanding how gravity and space radiation influence biology.

Once we become a multiplanet species, our chances to live long and prosper will take a huge leap skyward.

I think Pluto has to be considered among the places in the solar system that are possible homes for life.

As far as I'm concerned, Enceladus has become the go-to place in our solar system for issues bearing on extraterrestrial life. It's a great place to examine extraterrestrial organic chemistry that is water-based and, therefore, like biotic chemistry on Earth.

Among the plausible niches for extraterrestrial life in our solar system, the clouds of Venus are among the most accessible and the least well explained.

Titan is the one place in our solar system whose geographical and atmospheric diversity and complexity are rivaled only by the Earth's. It's very Earth-like, but it's also very different, which means we have a lot to learn as well as a prayer of understanding what we find.

Astrobiology is a great point of contact for science outreach. The public is naturally interested in extra-terrestrial life. Astrobiology provides an accessible point of access that leads to deeper questions.

As far as whether there is life there on Mars or whether there was actually ever life there, I don't know. It would be great to find out, though.

There are other planets besides the Earth and Mars. I'd like to remind you that studying Venus is vital to understanding life elsewhere.

Ultimately, what we're looking for in the long run is to find other Earth-like planets.

The universe is very big - there's about 100,000 million galaxies in the universe, so that means an awful lot of stars. And some of them, I'm pretty certain, will have planets where there was life, is life, or maybe will be life. I don't believe we're alone.

I do suspect we are going to get signs of life elsewhere, but how well prepared are we for this? Have we thought how we will approach them? We need to start thinking about that.

Theoretically, there are planets with an environment that can support life. As yet there is no evidence that there indeed is life on other planets. It's only a matter of time before we get to know.