“If we don’t look outside, we will never know if we are alone in the Universe”

Interview with Malcolm Fridlund

Life, as we know it, exists only on Earth. The emergence of life here may be a matter of probability or luck, but in Science there is no place for the second. Evidence is needed and, for this reason, there are researchers like Malcolm Fridlund, an expert on Astrobiology and Exoplanets, bent on finding other earths that can host some form of life, however simple it may be. Professor at the University of Leiden (Netherlands) and Affiliated Professor at the Chalmers Technical University in Gothenburg (Sweden), he has been involved in instrumental development and space missions of ESA and NASA since the 1990s in search of Exoplanets, like Darwin, PLATO or CoRoT, first mission of this type in which he was the project scientist. If human being is a biological accident or not, perhaps it is not for him to answer, but his contribution may bring us closer to know if we are alone in the Universe. Malcolm Fridlund recently visited the IAC within the Visiting Researchers Programme of the Jesús Serra Foundation, which seeks to deepen scientific collaborations and initiate new lines of action. >> Read the interview