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| | Cosmic Search Vol. 1, No. 3 - Extraterrestrial Life: Where is Everybody? |
 | | Without ignoring the possibility that totally unearthly life forms could exist in the universe, our search for extraterrestrial life will be of considerably less speculative nature if we restrict it to biological forms known, beyond the shadow of a doubt, to exist in the universe-namely, creatures on Planet Earth, built from carbon-containing molecules and water. |
 | | In the absence of any clear evidence for or against the occurrence of extraterrestrial life forms, scientists had to begin their search by taking recourse to logical reasoning based on statistics, the game of juggling the odds of various astrophysical, biological, and social developments in Creation which are presumably necessary to biological and civilizing evolution. |
 | | Thus, life must have originated hard and fast as soon as conditions were right-additional evidence for its suspected abundance in the universe-but it took many billions of years to evolve through its random processes of mutation and selection. |
| www.bigear.org /vol1no3/life.htm (2219 words) |
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