Over the past six weeks, mankind has learnt more about Pluto than in the previous 85 years. The dwarf planet has snowfalls, mountains of ice rearing two miles high, and a youthful crust that belies its creaky old age. Could it also harbour life?
Brian Cox believes it might. The tell-tale ooze of glaciers on Pluto’s surface hints at the possibility of an subterranean sea warm enough to host organic chemistry, the physicist and broadcaster told The Times.
“[The New Horizons probe] showed you that there may well be a subsurface ocean on Pluto, which means — if our understanding of life on Earth is even slightly correct — that you could have living things there,” he said.
Astronomers are awaiting the next droplets of data that are set to trickle back from the spacecraft, starting next weekend. Only five per cent of its observations have been beamed back to Earth so far, and while the first spectacular images held the public spellbound, most of the detailed science is yet to happen.
It is unlikely, however, that New Horizons can tell for certain whether warm water lurks beneath the dwarf planet’s skin. Professor Cox said the most immediate prospect for finding evidence of life was on the moons of other planets closer to home.
Advertisement
“It’s not as accessible, unfortunately, as Europa [a satellite of Jupiter] or some of Saturn’s moons. Titan looks as though it’s got a subsurface ocean now, and Enceladus throws liquid into space, so you can fly through that and see if it’s got organics in it,” he said.
Speaking at his science summer school for teenagers in east London, Professor Cox said it was also plausible that humans could be the only complex life in our galaxy.
The biological “bottlenecks” on the way to multicellular organisms are so difficult to squeeze through that only a tiny fraction of the planets where life emerges will be home to anything more than the simplest biology, he said.
“In one sense, the Earth is definitely physically insignificant, and don’t attach too much significance to the human race, because the disputes on this planet are parochial in the extreme given the size of the possibly infinite universe that we live in,” he said.
“But also what science is telling us now is that complex life is probably rare... We’re physically insignificant and yet probably very valuable.”
Advertisement
Professor Cox also called on the BBC to come clean on its reasons for dropping the Met Office as its weather forecaster. “The trouble is there’s no information. What is it? Is it on cost grounds, is it on some other grounds.
“It’s the world’s leading forecaster. That seems to be clear.
“I’ll be paying very close attention to the unfolding story . . . We’re asking a legitimate question: is it in the national interest for the public broadcaster not to cooperate with the leading forecaster and deliver information across the country?”