After reading the passage and watching the interviews, the main question I have is: How would the discovery of extraterrestrial life prompt another scientific revolution? In Johnson’s book, she introduced the concept of extraterrestrial life by first giving the current definition that biologists have come up with that focuses on several criteria. By discovering some entity beyond Earth that appears to be “alive,” I wonder if this entity will still satisfy the criterion that is set forth right now. Will these entities be rejected as being “alive” like viruses, or will they seem so close to life that our current definition of life changes? I think this is an interesting question to ask because scientific theories are constantly evolving and overthrown, so I wonder if something so fundamental to the backbone of biology can be changed by discovering extraterrestrial life, and if this change will prompt a scientific revolution.
The interviews also add interesting points to this question. In Jill Tarter’s interview, she discusses the public perception of science. As professor Goodman mentions, science in the ancient times was very much if something “looked right.” However, with extraterrestrial life, so much is unknown and unseen, and Tarter even mentions that they could be looking for the wrong signal, even if this signal was believed to be one of the most reliable methods. Loeb adds on how technologies more advanced than ours could seem magical and god-like, raising not just scientific questions but existential and political ones. With these ideas in mind, it seems that discovering extraterrestrial life could potentially not just cause a scientific revolution, but a revolution in all fields.