Many children believe in aliens — and this can be an occasion for the development of scientific thinking. After all, in order to understand whether we have a chance to meet “brothers in mind” on other planets, we need to figure out what conditions made it possible for the origin of life on Earth and whether these conditions can be repeated.
Many children believe in aliens — and this can be an occasion for the development of scientific thinking. After all, in order to understand whether we have a chance to meet “brothers in mind” on other planets, we need to figure out what conditions made it possible for the origin of life on Earth and whether these conditions can be repeated. Pretty quickly it becomes clear: if aliens exist, they are unlikely to be little green men in a flying saucer. Do creatures from other galaxies have to have eyes, ears, brains? Do they eat? Do they have children? Can they be so different from us that when we meet we do not recognize them as another form of life? The Norwegian astrophysicist Eirik Newt suggests reflecting on all this, drawing on a lot of information from various sciences — astronomy, physics, biology, chemistry.
OGI, 96 p.