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  • Australian Sky & Telescope

    Life beyond Earth?

    Dec 01, 2021 2 minutes
    by David Grinspoon

    OVER THE LAST CENTURY, scientific and popular beliefs about extraterrestrial life have fluctuated between grim and optimistic.

    Before the Space Age, many scientists were naively confident about the prospects for life nearby. With only telescopic data to constrain our wishful thinking, it was possible, and popular, to imagine vegetation forming the seasonal “wave of darkening” on

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