LaserSETI Lands in London

LaserSETI display at the Natural History Museum in London, UK. Image Credit: Eliot Gillum

Could Life Exist Beyond Earth? This question holds universal appeal and has the power to revolutionize how we view our place in the cosmos—if we ever find an answer.  It’s a question that is the lifeblood of the SETI Institute and also the theme of a new exhibit at the Natural History Museum in London, UK.

The exhibit, "Space: Could Life Exist Beyond Earth," takes you on a journey through space and time, exploring the museum’s amazing collections. Famous for its collection and research into meteorites, the journey starts here on Earth at the dawn of the solar system. On display are meteorites like Allende, which fell in Mexico in 1969 and contain minerals that formed before our solar system took shape 4.6 billion years ago, thus representing the original building blocks of Earth and the other planets. Samples of the earliest forms of life on Earth, Stromatolites —which were created by the ancient cyanobacteria responsible for our oxygen-rich atmosphere — lead us out to Mars and the possibility of ancient life on our nearest neighbor. There is a full-scale model of the Rosalind Franklin ExoMars Rover, and you can even drive a model rover across the surface of the Red Planet. Outwards, then, to the icy moons of the gas giants: Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Titan; Titan, possibly an analog world for the primordial Earth. A model of the Dragonfly helicopter adorns the penultimate gallery.  As we move towards the end of the exhibit, we visit worlds around other stars – exoplanets like the TRAPPIST-1 system with its seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a tiny red dwarf star. Could any of these be an Earth 2.0, and maybe even be the home world for an advanced alien race thinking as we do about life across the galaxy?