Lawmakers held a free-ranging and sometimes bewildering hearing Wednesday on the search for extraterrestrial life, gradually working around to the question of whether humans are alone in the universe. At the end of the 90-minute session, that issue remained unresolved.
Called "Astrobiology: The Search for Biosignatures in our Solar System and Beyond," the House Science Committee's hearing featured three witnesses with doctorates who are prominent in a scientific field that once was considered speculative.
Although the efforts of the world's scientists have yet to yield even one confirmed example of extraterrestrial life, astronomers have discovered hundreds of planets outside the solar system, and many believe that the galaxy is swarming with potentially habitable worlds. Some of those would inevitably, in time, produce intelligent life.