Search for 'alien life' could start on Earth

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No need to leave the planet to look for alien life — perhaps it's here, in peaceful coexistence with or complete isolation from the standard variety that permeates Earth.

"If life does form readily under Earth-like conditions, shouldn't it have formed many times over, right here on our home planet?" said Paul Davies, a theoretical cosmologist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University. "There's no planet more Earth-like than Earth itself."

The question of alien life is more commonly associated with the extraterrestrial variety, a quest that has NASA scratching its head over not only where to look, but how to identify it if found.

If we find that life has happened in the solar system twice, from scratch, if we can be sure of that, then it's going to have happened all around the universe," Davis said. "The universe is going to be teeming with life, and there's a very good chance that we are not alone."

Davies, who spoke last weekend at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago, says the evidence for an alternative life form could be right under -- or even in — our noses.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29239218/?gt1=43001