The search for alien life is older than you might think, says a new bit in COSMOS.

Over two thousand years ago, the ancient Greeks argued over the existence of life on other planets, but the idea really took off after the Copernican revolution, says Dick. "Once it was realised that all the planets go around the Sun, it was not hard to imagine that the other planets could be like Earth."

The article has lots of little-known anecdotes:

A light-based "Morse code" was also considered by the British statistician (and half-cousin of Charles Darwin) Francis Galton in 1896. He took care not to assume that Martians would have our same base-10 counting system, as they probably wouldn't have 10 fingers
.…
In 1901, American Nikola Tesla reported receiving a strange signal, we he thought might have come from Mars, on his giant transmitting tower in Colorado Springs.

Enjoy. [go!]

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