Life on Other Worlds

Abstract

The speculation that there could be extraterrestrial life began soon after Copernicus demoted the Earth to the status of just one of the planets. Galileo’s 1610 telescopic observation of the lunar surface led Kepler to suggest that the circular features seen on the Moon might be artificial constructions by lunar inhabitants. John Wilkins (1614–1672), Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and Bishop of Chester, wrote in his 1638 book The Discovery of a World in the Moon that the Moon may be inhabited by intelligent beings, and speculated on future journeys to the Moon and encounters with a lunar civilization. William Herschel was a firm believer in life on the Moon. In 1780, he wrote “… the almost absolute certainty, of her (the Moon) being inhabited” and observed features on the Moon were the “works of the lunarians and may be called their towns.” The idea that the Moon is populated by life remained popular well into the nineteenth century. An 1835 news report in the New York Sun, wrongly attributed to observations by John Herschel, reported the observation of forests, fields, beaches, and even winged creatures on the Moon. The Scottish astronomer Thomas Dick (1774–1857), in his 1838 book Celestial Scenery, estimated that there were over 22 trillion inhabitants on planets of the Solar System.