Today the search for life beyond Earth is one of the most exciting areas of astronomy. Whether looking for evidence of life on Mars, searching for planets around other stars, or listening for radio signals from distant civilizations, we humans seem to have a strong desire to make contact with our cosmic neighbors.
Surveys show that the great majority of people believe that there is life elsewhere in the universe.
It wasn't always that way. Belief that life might exist on other worlds sometimes came with a heavy price. For example, in 1600 an Italian monk named Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome, in part for daring to suggest that there might be innumerable inhabited worlds in the universe. Well, actually there's no evidence that Bruno said that, though he might have, you never know. To many astronomers, the question of whether or not life exists elsewhere in the universe boils down to statistics.