In the future we will send out probes in search of life to other worlds. They will scour our Galaxy and potentially find their way to other galaxies. Of course with so many potential life forms, how will they know life when they see it; especially if our artificial intelligent space explorers are not alive themselves?

Well first we must define what life is and we can do that by categorizing the life forms on Earth and all the theoretical possibilities off those baseline forms. One online think tank recently considered this concept and decided that perhaps we ought to try and figure out what makes mankind unique? Then another think tank member initiated the conversation to include a program to use for space exploration and searching for life on other worlds too. Other members of the group including the principal investigator of the; What Makes Mankind Unique Project stated the they had not considered;

Whether or not the results [of that project] would constitute a suitable source for NASA or otherwise has never crossed my mind.

Yet it only takes a few clicks on the Internet to see that indeed NASA would be interested in such.

http://www.resa.net/nasa/biology_systematics.htm

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-03zzt.html

http://www.astrobio.net/

http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/search.html

And my thoughts are once you have the Matrix of animal life and human life while trying to find the answer to the question what makes mankind unique then for the Space Exploration Program for the Artificial Intelligent Life Form Robotic Teams it would only be a matter of defining Intelligent Life and plugging that into your Matrix.

A secondary white paper of course; then I want to take it once step further and the third white paper could be produced entitled; Justification for Programming of Artificial Intelligent Robot Explorers to Identify Intelligent Life and to observe, study and categorize life forms based on your matrix with simple methods to determine categories to trigger a data imprinting event. Without this, how will the artificial intelligent life form explorers know when they actually find intelligent life? Consider this in 2006.