The detection of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society

Baruch S. Blumberg is Distinguished Scientist, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA and Prof. of Medicine and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.  He was the Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) (1999 – 2002), Senior Advisor to the Administrator of NASA (2001 – 2002), Principal Scientist in Fundamental Space Biology (2003-2004). and Master of Balliol College (1989 – 1994). He earned an M.D. degree from Columbia University, (1951), and D. Phil in Biochemistry from Oxford University (1957).  He is currently a distinguished Scientist with the NASA Lunar Science Institute and the NAI.

He was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize for "discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases" and specifically, for the discovery of the Hepatitis B virus and invention of the .hepatitis B vaccine.   He is the President of the American Philosophical Society. 

"Charles Cockell is Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the UK Centre for Astrobiology. His academic interests encompass life in extreme environments, the interactions of microbes with minerals and the implications for earth system processes and the habitability of extraterrestrial environments. He received his first degree in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Bristol and his PhD (DPhil) from the University of Oxford in molecular biology. He then undertook a National Research Council Associateship at the NASA Ames Research Centre in California before working at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. He moved to the Open University to take up a Chair in Geomicrobiology in 2005. He sits on ESA’s Planetary Protection and Life Sciences Working Groups. He is a Senior Editor of the journal, Astrobiology. Popular science books include ‘Impossible Extinction’ (CUP), which explores the tenacity of microbes on the Earth, and ‘Space on Earth’ (Macmillan) which looks at the links between environmentalism and space exploration. He is Chair of the Earth and Space Foundation, a non-profit organisation he established in 1994 and was first Chair of the Astrobiology Society of Britain."

Professor Pascale Ehrenfreund is currently a Research Professor at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University's Elliot School of International Affairs. Over the past decade, she has been Professor at Nijmegen, Leiden, and Amsterdam Universities in the Netherlands. Since her PhD at University Paris VII in 1990 she investigated organic matter in the interstellar medium and in solar system bodies, including planetary surfaces, comets, and meteorites. She served as Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on many NASA/ESA space missions, including satellites, planetary probes, and experiments on the International Space Station. She has served on many ESA and NASA committees in the last decade. Dr. Ehrenfreund holds a masters degree in Molecular Biology from the University of Vienna, a doctorate in Astrophysics from the University of Paris VII/ University of Vienna (Austria), a habilitation in Astrochemistry from the University of Vienna and a masters degree in Management & Leadership from Webster University in Leiden (The Netherlands). 

Simon Conway Morris is a Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John's College. He is best known for his work on the Cambrian explosion (summarised in The Crucible of Creation) and evolutionary convergence (reported in Life's Solution and more recently The Runes of Evolution, as well as the website Map of Life). Current projects involve a new website on evolution (FortyTwo).

Michel Mayor, born in Switzerland, is an emeritus professor of Astronomy at Geneva University. He is co-discoverer in 1995, with Didier Queloz, of the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi, and has discovered more than 150 additional planets and planetary systems. Among his team's recent discoveries is a low mass exoplanet that appears to be located in the so-called “habitable zone".

After studying Physics at Lausanne University, Mayor obtained his Phd in Astronomy (1971) at Geneva University. His research interests include galactic structure and evolution, globular cluster dynamics, stellar duplicity, stellar rotation, and extrasolar planets.

From 1998 to 2004, he was Director of the Geneva Observatory. M.Mayor is Principal Investigator on the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planetary Search (HARPS) spectrograph project, which, since 2003, has conducted radial velocity searches for extrasolar planets at the European Southern Observatory’s 3.60 meter telescope at La Silla, Chile.

Among his awards and recognitions, mention must be made of the Balzan Prize (2000), the Einstein Medal (2004) and the Shaw Prize for Astronomy (2005). M.Mayor is a foreign associate of the French Academy of Sciences and honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society. 

Malcolm Fridlund is a Swedish Astronomer who has worked for the European Space Agency in the Netherlands for the last 20 years. He has been the study scientist of the the Darwin mission and is currently ESA's project scientist for the CoRoT mission searching for terrestrial exoplanets. 

Born in England in 1917 and educated in Belgium, Christian de Duve holds medical and chemical degrees from the Catholic University of Louvain. He is emeritus professor at his Belgian alma mater (1947-1985) and at the Rockefeller University in New York (1962-1988), and founder-administrator of the former International Institute of Cellular and Molecular Pathology (ICP), now known as the de Duve Institute, a biomedical research center he created in Brussels in 1974 and headed till 1991. Known for the discovery of lysosomes and peroxisomes, de Duve has become interested more recently in the origin and evolution of life. He is the author of several books on the subject. His honors include foreign membership in the Royal Society (1988) and the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. 

Paul Davies is a British-born theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and best-selling author. He is Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and Co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative, at Arizona State University. His research focuses on the “big questions” of existence, ranging from the origin of the universe to the origin of life and the nature of time. He helped create the theory of quantum fields in curved spacetime, which provided explanations for how black holes can radiate energy, and what caused the ripples in the cosmic afterglow of the big bang. He was a forerunner of the theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars, and is currently championing the proposal to seek a “shadow biosphere” on Earth as evidence for multiple origins of life. Davies is known as a passionate science communicator. His popular books are noted for presenting complex ideas in accessible terms, and include The Mind of God, About Time, How to Build a Time Machine, The Origin of Life and The Goldilocks Enigma. His latest book, The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe? celebrates the 50^th anniversary of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), and will be published in March. Paul Davies is a Member of the Order of Australia and a recipient of the Templeton Prize, the Kelvin Medal, and the Michael Faraday Prize from The Royal Society. The asteroid 1992 OG was officially named (6870) Pauldavies in recognition of his work on cosmic impacts.  

Frank Drake conducted the first organized search for ETI signals in 1960, two years after completing his PhD in astronomy at Harvard University.  In the same year, he also devised the widely-known Drake Equation, giving an estimate of the number of communicative extraterrestrial civilizations that we might find in our galaxy.  He is well known for constructing the Arecibo Message of 1974 – the first interstellar message transmitted via radio waves from our planet for the benefit of any extraterrestrial civilization.  He has served in several roles at the SETI Institute in California since 1984, and is currently Director at the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe.  During this time he has also held several positions at University of California, Santa Cruz , where he is now Professor Emeritus of Astronomy & Astrophysics.  Dr Drake is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.  He is the author of over 150 articles and books; and speaker and invited lecturer at numerous functions and symposia.  

Ted Peters is Professor of Systematic Theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, USA. He co-edits the journal Theology and Science published by Routledge for the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. He is author of Science, Theology and Ethics (Ashgate 2003); The Evolution of Terrestrial and Extra-terrestrial Life (Pandora 2008); and Anticipating Omega (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2008). He is co-author of Theological and Scientific Commentary on Darwin’s Origin of Species (Abingdon 2009).

After receiving his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1967, Dr. Harrison joined the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis, where he is now Professor Emeritus. He has a long standing interest in the cultural or societal aspects of astrobiology and SETI, and his books include Living Aloft: Human Requirements for Extended Spaceflight (1985), From Antarctica to Outer Space: Life in Isolation and Confinement (1991), After Contact: The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life (1997), Spacefaring: The Human Dimension (2001), Starstruck: Cosmic Visions in Science Religion and Folklore (2007) and Cultures in the Cosmos (forthcoming).Dr. Harrison has served on NASA’s Space Human Factors Element Science and Technology Working Group and several study groups of the International Academy of Astronautics pertaining to SETI, space architecture, and the protection of Earth from asteroids and comets. 

Kathryn Denning is an anthropologist and archaeologist. At the broadest level, her research examines scholarly and popular ideas about Others, their relationships to us, and how we can know them. The Others she studies include the ancient (in archaeology), the animal (in zoos), and the alien (in SETI). Much of her recent work has focused upon SETI, particularly scientists' conceptions of the alien Other. Her published work includes examinations of SETI researchers’ use of Earth civilizations and history as analogues for ETI, ideas about how one might communicate with a radically different intelligence, the interstellar transmission debate, and efforts to prepare for a detection. Her current projects (jointly with, variously, Lori Marino, Margaret Race, Douglas Vakoch, Paul Davies, the SETI Institute, and the NASA Astrobiology Institute) focus upon the evolution of intelligence as applicable to SETI, and the social issues connected to astrobiology and SETI. Denning is a member of the IAA SETI Permanent Study Group.

Iván Almár, DSc, is Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, Budapest, Hungary. He is Honorary President of the Hungarian Astronautical Society. He worked in space research for more than 50 years on satellite tracking, upper-atmospheric research and satellite geodesy. Member of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) since 1984, and was chairman of its Space and Society Commission in 2003-2005. He was Vice President of the International Astronautical Federation in 1982-1984. As guest editor of the IAA Multilingual Space Dictionary he received the IAA Book Award in 2001. Member of the SETI Committee since 1983, and was its co-chairman between 1986 and 2001. In 2008 he presented the Billingham Cutting-Edge Lecture at the International Astronautical Congress in Glasgow, and has received the Giordano Bruno Memorial Award of the SETI League. In January 2010 he was one of the invited speakers at the Discussion Meeting of the Royal Society on ‘The detection of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society’. 

Professor Mazlan Othman was educated in Malaysia and studied Physics at the University of Otago, New Zealand, becoming the first woman at the University to receive a Ph.D. in Astrophysics. She returned to Malaysia as her country’s first astrophysicist and set about establishing university courses in astronomy, laboratories for undergraduate and post-graduate training and actively promoting the space sciences. Her campaigning to promote public awareness of astronomy led to a position with the Prime Minister’s Department to direct the design and construction of the National Planetarium. Whilst here, she also established the nation’s Space Science Studies Division and, as Director-General, initiated the National Microsatellite Programme, which gave birth to TiungSAT-1.

 

In 1999, she was appointment Director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and, in 2002, returned to Malaysia to set up and lead the National Space Agency. As Director-General of the National Space Agency, her strategic initiatives included instituting national level discussions and coordination on space-related activities, formulation of the national space programme, law and policy. During her tenure, she directed the establishment of the National Space Centre, which houses TT&C, AIT, and calibration research facilities. She also instituted the Langkawi National Observatory. In 2007, she returned to the post of Director of UNOOSA. In 2009, she was appointed Deputy Director General of the United Nations Office at Vienna (UNOV).

 

Othman also has a keen interest in fusing the sciences with the arts and initiated the Science-Inspired Arts Camp jointly with the National Art Gallery, bringing together prominent artists and scientists. She was also instrumental in the production of two large-format film science documentaries and has produced four planetarium shows. Othman has published and presented numerous academic papers, not only on astrophysics but also on sustainable development and many aspects of management. She is a fellow of several professional bodies.