One question that intrigues most people is that relating to the existence of life beyond the Earth in any of the stars that make up the universe.

To try to solve this issue millions of scientists are working around the world. NASA has started a number of missions on Mars to learn whether there existed any signs of life.

History

Thinking about the existence of extraterrestrial life appears as scholars in religion and mythology of civilizations as old as the Egyptian and Babylonian.

In the Western world and Democritus Leucipedo highlights two of the great figures of atomistic movement which believed in the existence of innumerable worlds.

Their theories were based on atoms and the void. These worlds were born and died in a vacuum due to the existence of many atoms and a vacuum infinity, so there might be more than one world.

Later this topic was taken up by religions such as Judaism, Islam and Christianity. In the latter case the idea of the existence of more than one world was because of heresy in the Middle Ages.

This picture changed with the advent of the telescope developed by Copernicus in the late fifteenth century. It also helped to change the creation of its heliocentric model.

Astrobiology

It is a science that studies the life that exists or could exist sometime in the Solar System, both on Earth and beyond. It is also known as exobiology.

In astrobiology working groups of experts in the following areas: geology, chemistry, oceanography, astrophysics, molecular biology, zoology and paleontology.

The Institute of the NASA Astrobiology (NAI)

This center astrobiológico born in 1998 in the United States and is composed of 14 groups of scientists and several laboratories located throughout the American territory.

Some members of this institute are eg Arizona State University, Carnegie Institution Washington, Harvard University and NASA Ames Research Center.

The Center for Astrobiology (CAB)

It is the first center of astrobiology not American. It is based in Torrejon de Ardoz in Madrid and is direct contact with the NAI. This is a joint CSIC - INTA.

Some of the laboratories that comprise it are Transdisciplinar Laboratory, the Laboratory of Geology and Planetary Laboratory of Molecular Evolution.

Conditions for extraterrestrial life has

In talking about the conditions of life outside the Earth, scholars always part of what we already know, namely that life on another planet would need to develop the same factors that on Earth.

Because of this, the conditions that must be given on a planet so that life may exist are:

·  A liquid which can carry out chemical reactions.

·  One element that could form compounds with great ease.

·  One source of energy.

In the case of the Earth these elements would correspond with the water, carbon and energy from the ultraviolet and electric shocks.

SETI Project

This is a project that started at the end of the fifties in order to know whether there is intelligent life. Its initials refer to Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

The SETI is based on the study of acoustic signals picked up by several radio telescopes located around the world and sending messages to space in order and hope that they will be answered.

SETI @ home

In 1999 came the SETI @ home, a program on computers that users have in their homes can process the signals captured by the Arecibo radio telescope in Chile.

The user must download the program that is no more than a screen saver that analyzes the signals it receives fragmented at the University of California at Berkeley and previously captures the radio.