Life Beyond Earth

On the likelihood of life on other worlds, the crusty British man of letters Thomas Carlyle opined "if they be inhabited, what a scope for folly; if they not be inhabited, what a waste of space." Writer/host Timothy Ferris (The Whole Shebang, the earlier PBS program The Creation of the Universe [VL-11/98]) takes viewers by the Cosmology 101 hand in this entertaining, informative, historical and contemporary examination of the search for extraterrestrial life. Although paleontologist and best selling science writer Stephen Jay Gould quips here that there are "more e. coli in your gut than there has ever been people on Earth," leading one to believe that Darwin's natural selection theories don't necessarily favor intelligence or consciousness, the likelihood of sentient life elsewhere in the universe is almost a certainty. Interviewing such luminaries as Gould and Freeman Dyson, as well as various astrophysicists, astronomers, and cosmologists, the absolutely engaging Ferris traces the history of our search for any sign of life out there (Moon: no; Mars: maybe) and offers compelling reasons why advanced alien beings have not contacted us yet (reminding us, for instance, that the technological window of opportunity for us to receive and process signals has been very, very short--roughly 100 years--in relation to the billions of years the universe has been around). As the late Carl Sagan (to whom this film is dedicated) was fond of saying, "the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." On the contrary, Life Beyond Earth suggests that contact is not so much a matter of "if" as of "when." Sure to spark discussion in classrooms and amongst family members, Life Beyond Earth is highly recommended. Aud: J, H, C, P. (R. Pitman)