The Mission
The Mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.
We believe we are conducting the most profound search in human history - to know our beginnings and our place among the stars.
Photographs of strange 'pyramid' structures
In 1971 NASA's Mariner 9 probe took the first ever photographs of strange 'pyramid' structures on Mars on a region of the planet known to astronomers as Elysium. Dr James Hurtak, a graduate in remote sensing technology (and an acquaintance of Mark Lehner's) was one of the earliest researchers to show interest in the Elysium 'pyramids' -- which were officially dismissed by NASA as 'tricks of light'. In 1975, despite NASA's apparent indifference, Hurtak predicted that further finds of similar structures, including a Sphinx-like monument, would be made on Mars and that they would all prove to be connected in a great cosmic blueprint to the Giza monuments in Egypt. 22
Life On Other Planets in the Solar System
We humans have never accepted the idea that it is only on the Earth that life has occurred. From earliest times when we peopled the heavens with gods, goddesses and supernatural beings, through our space exploration activities of the 20th Century, we are driven to decide the question:
Is there Life on Other Planets?
This website is dedicated to the exploration of that question and to the cataloging of the tremendously rich resources on this topic available through our new "world brain," the Internet.
Earliest Evidence of Life on our own planet
In whichever way life developed, we have fossil traces of it that have been reliably dated at 3.5 billion years old. And there are suggestions from carbon deposit analyses (looking at percentages of the kinds of isotopes that we know are produced by life) that hint at an even earlier animation. The fossil remains, of bacteria, look similar to a modern variety, the Cyanobacteria, which are actually thought of as the most advanced.
We are looking at some two to three hundred million years for the appearance of a form of life on Earth.
Evidence for a common origin for Life on Earth
- DNA and RNA are apparantly the 'universal' basis for all life on Earth.
- Only 20 [known] amino acids are used in all living things on Earth.
- L-amino acids exclusively are used in all living things on Earth.
- ATP* is the 'universal' energy used in all living cells.
- Fermentation is the first step in ALL metabolism.
- Highly efficient oxygen-burning represents a 'last' step in aerobic organisms.
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