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NO.055

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The Providence Journal, Friday, April 28, 1967 illlllllilw^^

BOOKS IN REVIEW

'There Will Be None Forever

INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE, bv I, S. Sltklnvskii and Cnrl Sa^nn. 50f) pagea. Holdcn-Day, 98,95. By FRANCISCO J, AVALA Aror there other intelligent beings in the universe? Is the immense universe that modern astronomy has discovered (illod with civilizations similar perhaps In certain ways to our own? Or can St bo that the hiarl.h Is unique, and that WR are forever alone In the 'Intelligent Life In tlie Universe1 is the product of a unique international collaboration between a world famous Russian astronomer and R brilliant. space sricnj list From Harvard University. Shk.1av.sUii and Sagnn had never mnt previous In publication. Their cooperation has produced an informative and well written book, full of excitement. It Is addressed to the general pviblic at large, not only to the space scientKsts. Without sacrifice of accuracy they have succeeded $n producing a highly readable work, in spite of its five hundred pages and the intricate .nature oC the subject, The. book Is divided Into three parts. Tlie first part deals with, the 'origins and evolution of the universe, the second and third parts with the existence of life, and of intelligent life In other planets. respectively, Whether an astronomer bellovea the Immensa space of our ffalaxy to be -populated by planets depends on what theory he accepts to explain the origin of planets. It is the authors' contention that a considerable percentage of stars are accompanied by planets, if ten per cent of the stars of the Galaxy are circled by planetary systems similar to our own we reach the remarkable conclusion that there arc-some 15 billion planetary systems in our galaxy alone. The physical conditions needed in a planet for life to exist are very stringent indeed. In the -solar'system only Mars has - a . slight probability of harboring sprno. primitive focms of life: similar to those on earth.' ScirnHsts, however, have'speculated that different forms , of ik*lr*i*pp1icating orpanisms may p>:ist, Living orcanisins which rhrivn without oxygon exist in our planet. Life based on the clement silicon rather than carbon could have developed in other plnnets. Shklovskii and Sagan conclude that fit least a billion stars In our Galaxy may have habitable planets: But what about rnan? What about the evolution of Intelligence? Is it reasonable to assume that a large number of planets are inhabited by organisms with intelligence and manipulative abilities more or less similar to our own? It Is at tbis point that the authors make the most remarkable, and I must add-, most unacceptable assumption. In their opinion the fraction of planets having life in vvhich intelligent beings are expected to arise by evolution is at least of one out of ten. Taking Into con* Even assuming that there si deration other limiting factors they, es-timate that there are many millions, even many are at present about one mil- billions, of planets, and that a lion advanced technical civili- large fraction of them contain l i f e , we must conclude zations in the galaxy. that with all probability we I wish 1 could go along with are the only intelligent beings the authors' optimism. As- in the universe. To quote tronomers in general agree Lorcn Eiselcy, from the Unithat planets probably exist In versity of Pennsylvania, large numbers. The fact re- "Lights come and go in the mains, however, that there is night sky. Men, troubled at no direct evidence of the ex- last by the things they build, istence of a single planet our- may loss in their sleep end side the solar system, Virtual- dream bad dreams, or be ly all biochemists agree that life arose spontaneously from nonliving matter. If there are awake ' whjle the meteors many Karth-like planets, it is whisper greenly overhead But reasonable to speculate that nowhere in nil sp-ace or on l i f e has arisen repeatedly In a thousand worlds will there the universe, evm though we be men to share our loneli* do not know whether that is ness . . . In the nature of Irte and in the principles of evolua fact, Life arose on Earth some tion we have had our answer. three billion years aso, On the j; Of men elsewhere, and hegeological t i m e scale man is j yond, there will he none f o r a newcomer. Man came into ever." existence in 1hc last, two million yogi's. Organic evolution || is an opportunistic process, < TCvnl.ution from Ihe i n i t i a l | forms of life, to in HIV in <" Hide's billions of events, each one ' with a vanishingly small prob- j ability. The course of evolution is the result of many highly improbable events and it is essentially not repeatable, Among the many millions of species which have come to existence in the past or are presently l i v i n g , no species has over evolved, or ( can ever evolve, twice.'In organic evolution repetition is virtually impossible. This essential nonv^ppatfibility of evolutionary processes has a decisive bearing on the chances that human - like o r g a n i s m rny have evolved Ln other

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