NASA to Space: Is Anyone Out There?

Forget "Star Wars" and its fanciful world of special-effects empires, evil and otherwise. NASA is getting serious about the far more exciting prospect that life exists beyond our planet. The space agency announced on Tuesday the appointment of Baruch Blumberg, a prominent Nobel-winning biochemist, to head its recently launched, life-searching Astrobiology Institute. "This effort goes far beyond our previous approach of just keeping an antenna on for sounds at earth-based listening posts," says TIME science senior writer Jeffrey Kluger. "This is the beginning a serious multi-disciplined effort that will bring in knowledge from chemistry, physics, biology, geology and other fields."

As scientists further explore the most extreme environments of our own planet -- the regions of extreme heat, cold, darkness and/or pressure -- they are discovering "how hardy life can be," says Kluger. This research can suggest clues for finding it in other-world environments. Already, says Kluger, "there is every reason to think that there is life on Jupiters moon Europa. There is a consensus, for example, that if you could transplant certain simple earthly organisms in Europas presumed and likely salty-briny ocean, they would survive." As we learn more and more about space, "we are discovering that the cosmos is drenched with the stuff of elemental biology," says Kluger. Its the kind of stuff that can drive scientists to uncover real worlds more amazing than any you might ever see splashed across a movie screen.