Consequences of the Discovery of Life: Some Thoughts - AC As we think farther and farther into the future, we have to consider life outside the Solar System. There are four main questions: does life exist in distant stellar systems? does it have a common type and origin to terrestrial life? has it or will it try to contact us? when and how will humankind reach out and make contact? Presumably, we will detect the existence of life elsewhere in the Universe long before we can travel to meet it. Programmes such as DARWIN and SETI could well deliver evidence that we are not alone during the lifetimes of people now reading this. We speculate at some length about this possibility, the form it will take and the effect it will have. Next, we must consider the means whereby physical contact may occur. Will we ever fly to meet other civilisations? Is it more or less likely that they will come to meet us first? Questions like these have long fascinated humanity. We still cannot answer them conclusively, but scientific progress is bringing us closer, at an ever-increasing rate. One cannot help but feel that we are, as a species, on the verge of a breakthrough, a do-or-die step towards the stars. Athena Coustenis - Astronomer at the Observatoire de Meudon (France)