Ed Churchwell
Professor/Astronomer
University of Wisconsin
It is unlikely to change our day-to-day lives, but it will certainly change our outlook on the universe in fundamental ways. For one, we will know that life exists elsewhere in the universe and that there is a chance that intelligence exists as well. We may not be alone in the Galaxy.

Astronomer*
We may still find evidence of micro organisms or lower life forms on Mars or ice encased waters of Europa. If so, I doubt that this will change our lives except prove that life is possible elsewhere. If we found apes swinging from trees on some distant planet or even human like beings on some other world, then I'd say there would be some significant changes. Intelligent life elsewhere could provide us with new contacts and broaden our intellectual horizons. I think however that it would be met with fear by some, especially some religious groups; it may even cause some religions to dissolve if not completely redefine themselves.

Astronomer*
Uncertain. The discovery of a former life-form on Mars will be interesting, but not change much. The arrival of a space ship might have a lot of effect (although I believe this would be VERY unlikely). Science fiction writers make a living musing over questions like this.

Douglas Scott
Professor
University of British Columbia
Who can guess?
Certainly it will be a big deal!

Dr. Michael M. Davis
Astronomer
SETI Institute
Check out http://www.seti.org/science/principles.html for the agreed-upon activities if a signal is detected. There has been a lot of serious thought about how our lives might change, but my personal feeling is that it is very hard to predict, either short term or long term effects.

Yervant Terzian
Professor
Cornell University
If aliens discover us and they are superior we may not fair very well. If they are benevolent we may profit from them.

Prof. Wayne G. Roberge
Theoretical Astrophysicist
Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.
This would answer the question above once and for all. If we had just the TWO examples of life in the Universe (ours plus another), that would tell us that probability of starting life is not small. We could be pretty sure that lots of life exists on other planets.

Andrew Liddle
Astronomer
University of Sussex, UK
Impossible to tell until it happens.

Karen Vanlandingham
Assistant Professor
Columbia University's Biosphere 2 Center
I don't think it would change everyday life. It would certainly challenge our thinking.

Astronomer*
This depends greatly on the form of life. If primitive, it will confirm the nice idea that life can exist on other planets and bolster our efforts to find other civilizations (e.g. the SETI project). If advanced, it could engender a wide range of reactions from the paranoid to the optimistic.

Eilat Glikman
Graduate Student
Columbia University
If we can study the 'biology' of this life form, it will become possible, hopefully, to define life in more universal terms - and understand *our* roots a bit better.

Professor*
Hard to know. Could be good, but could just as easily be devastatingly bad. Consider the fate of technologically less developed civilizations on Earth when they were discovered by more developed civilizations. The less developed civilizations tended to suffer. Consider, e.g., native Americans, so-called primitive tribes in the Amazon, etc. It could be argued
that it would be healthiest for us to develop and mature on our own.

But it could be absolutely exhilarating.

Walter Harris
Astronomer
University of Wisconsin-Madison
What a question!

I wish I could say, but I think the experience would be a very personal thing. If we were to find direct, provable (and this is harder than it seems) evidence of non-terrestrial life, it would be a profound moment in our history, perhaps THE profound moment. I won't try to address the political, social, and religious implications of such a discovery except to say that they will probably be the most important ones, and those that take the longest for us to sort out. From a scientists perspective, the discovery of other life will tell us a great deal about how tenacious life is, what kinds of environments it can thrive in, how it is made up (like us or not like us), and, most of all, that we *should* be looking for it. Such a discovery would radically alter our priorities for the exploration of space and, if we discovered life on Mars for example, affect the places we visit with spacecraft.

Bob Mathieu
Professor of Astronomy
Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin - Madison
That is one that you can answer as well or better than me!

Professor Rex A. Saffer
Physicist, Astronomer, Educator
Dept. of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Villanova University
For most of us, it will not make much difference here on Earth. We will still need to go
to work, pay our bills, eat and drink, sleep, live with our family and friends, etc. For the
religious, it could make a significant difference in how we think about the universe and where it came from (just so you know, I am member of the Episcopalian church and I believe in God.) If we knew there were other intelligent races, it might help us to realize that we are all the same here on Earth, we all have the same DNA, and we have to live together in such a way that no one is hungry, everyone deserves an opportunity to be happy and to live in peace and with justice. We have a long way to go!

Martin Duncan
Professor of Physics
Queen's University, Canada
If we can communicate with them, it is hard to imagine how many things they have discovered about science and the universe that we have yet to discover ourselves.

Steven Balbus
Astronomy Professor
University of Virginia
We may have already found such evidence in the Martian meteorites. How has your life changed?

Eric McKenzie
Graduate student
University of Florida
It's a tough question: depending on the circumstances, it could change our technology quite a bit, and maybe our philosophy too, or neither might be affected much. Science-fiction authors have spent a lot more time thinking about these questions than scientists have. A lot of their books are fun, but unrealistic; Carl Sagan's Contact and Polish author Stanislaw Lem's His Master's Voice are two of the most realistic accounts I've run across of what contact might be like (with more advanced life forms). The former is pretty optimistic and the latter pretty pessimistic.

Astronomy Professor*
It depends on whether it is radio contact or up close and personal. Many SETI researchers believe the most profound impact will be on human religious beliefs, which are likely to crumble in light of contact with superior extraterrestrial intelligence.

John Huchra
Astronomer/Professor
Harvard-Smithsonian
Depends on whether or not they're hungry!
No, this is a complicated question who's answer depends a lot on what the alien life form is like.

*Respondents opted for anonymity and we respect their wishes.