This refers to Devangshu Datta's column "The ABC of life on Earth" (Quantum Leap, March 6). The late Fred Hoyle, one of the most original minds in current-day astronomy research, spent decades searching for answers to questions on the origins of life. He realised that life couldn't have arisen by chance in a primordial soup on Earth. In his book, "Evolution from Space" (co-authored with Chandra Wickramasinghe), Hoyle favoured and popularised a view called "panspermia", the notion that life originated somewhere else in the universe and was driven to earth by electromagnetic radiation pressure.
However, for life to originate elsewhere in the universe, there would have to be an environment on another planet capable of supporting it. So, extra-terrestrial intelligence has been an ongoing project since the 1960s. Some critics feel that it's bad form for scientists to attempt such interstellar communication to seek an answer for one of the greatest scientific mysteries - are we alone in the universe? It also raises the question how did we get to evolve on planet Earth.
H N Ramakrishna Bengaluru
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