What new question does the reading and interviews raise for you about the ways in which the discovery of extraterrestrial life could affect human economies, religions, and science? What makes this question difficult to answer?
One big question the reading and interviews raised for me is: How would discovering extraterrestrial life change the way power and wealth are distributed around the world? People often focus on how it would impact science or religion, but I started wondering about who would actually benefit from the discovery. If there were new technologies or resources involved, would the richest countries or corporations claim them first, widening the gap between the powerful and the rest of the world? Or could this be a moment that pushes us toward more global cooperation—where countries work together, not compete, to figure out what it all means? It makes me wonder whether we're truly ready, as a global society, to face something so big in a fair and collective way.
What makes this question so hard to answer is how many unknowns we’re dealing with. We have no idea what kind of life we might find—it could be as simple as bacteria or as advanced as intelligent civilizations. Plus, the world we live in is already complicated and divided. Would this discovery unite us, or would it become just another thing to fight over? And how would different belief systems react—would it challenge faith or deepen it? There are so many ways it could go, and that uncertainty makes it both fascinating and a little overwhelming to think about.