The search for extraterrestrial life is ramping up among eccentric billionaires and government officials alike. (NASA, as Slate has argued, is pivoting to astrobiology.) One possibility for what might be out there that’s, relatively speaking, one of the most plausible theories has so far also been overlooked: space viruses. While some might dismiss microscopic phages as considerably less thrilling than fluorescent green humanoids, they’d actually be a hugely exciting first find.
All of this might sound wild—astrobiology is, after all, the kind of scientific specialization that gets name-dropped in Star Trek—but it’s the direction we’re taking. Congress has ordered NASA to take on “the search for life’s origins, evolution, distribution, and future in the universe.” Here on Earth, all of those big ideas are tied to viruses. The problem is that viruses’ importance to life on Earth isn’t necessarily widely known—among scientists or members of the public. Ken Stedman, the co-chair of NASA’s Virus Focus Group, is hoping to raise viruses’ profile and repair their reputation—last week, he published a review in which he and two other scientists, Aaron Berliner of UC–Berkeley and Tomohiro Mochizuki of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, lay out the case for how, where, and why we should be looking for these tiny not-quite life forms.
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