Today’s column is a little “out there.” (Some might say, “What else is new?” but I only mean physical distance).

I have always wondered about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, just like us, or totally different.

Just the creeping motion of the projector in Morehead Planetarium’s “nocturnal day” in 1964 added to my existing excitement about space, and life on other worlds. It made me think of “Martian machines” in the book “The War of the Worlds.”

Of course, Star Trek dealt with alien life, one episode dealing with a “rock creature” resembling burnt pizza (years before “Spaceballs” in 1987).

Long before the “gyroscopic” space station of “2001 A Space Odyssey” (1968), I remember some late 1950s TV program with depictions of futuristic space stations resembling my brother Joe’s cymbal set (minus the pedal).

Travelers departing such stations were sort of like those departing the Salisbury train station, except “Places to go, people to see,” being replaced by “Places to go, intelligent life to find.”

The goal of “seeking out life” was stated by Captain Kirk at the beginning of each Star Trek episode. Schools and businesses later came up with “mission statements,” but that of the U.S.S. Starship Enterprise may have been the first.

Later on, Martian probes (ours, not theirs) scratched about and found life’s components, but not its “spark.”

Scientists say a “Goldilocks zone” of planet distance from parent star exists, directly related to life’s possibility. Too often, many planets look “just right” until surface temperature is measured. On some, Goldilocks’ soup and her blood would be frozen solid (too cold!); while on others, both would boil (too hot!).

Other planets have so little air that living there permanently would be like being atop Mount Everest with a “forever” supply of oxygen tanks. Currently, over 200 permanent “residents” are there, without need of oxygen (or anything).

With “Star Wars” movies, the possibility of life in space “long ago” was added to its being “far away.” I remember an episode of the old TV series “Men Into Space,” where actor William Lundigan walks past a fish fossil on the moon, not seeing it, leaving the home audience (especially little boys) to exclaim loudly at their “Zenith” (or “Sylvania”): “Look down, to the left, there it is!” As this show wasn’t “Winky Dink,” the frustrated viewer could offer no crayon of assistance to the astronaut.

Then there was the time, some years ago, we received “hyped” news of a discovered meteorite that was “kicked-up” from Mars millions of years ago, falling all the way to earth with fossilized “bacteria-esque” structures inside. In this case, the “esque” never became the “actual.” These “bugs” proved to have been the products of natural chemistry, kind of like a nature-made “Piltdown-germ fossil.”

“Scratching and digging” are happening again on Mars; and it would be wonderful just to find an ant, even one of the “p–s” variety. (Maybe a picnic blanket with fried chicken needs to be set out.)

If only fossil life is found there, it could be dated, then we would know: “When last lilacs in the Martian door-yard bloomed.”

I heard terrible news the other day (still not over Pluto yet). Some scientists believe that in the solar system’s youth, Jupiter may have wandered inward and caused some planetary mayhem. My son, Jeremy has a friend with a phobia of the planet Jupiter, whether in the sky or depicted on paper (perhaps he’s wiser than we). Jupiter supposedly altered our solar system so much that some astronomers now believe life is much rarer in the universe than previously thought.

All these tantalizing discoveries of worlds “not quite right for life” keep getting increasingly on my nerves: “So near, yet so far!”

The positive fallout of it JUST BEING US would be that we could feel more special about ourselves and each other. (Who knows? This might be the only place in the universe where both common courtesy and common rudeness exist.)

In that event, a suitable “world-wide anthem” for the earth might be Peggy Lee’s recording of “Is That All There Is?” We might even sarcastically inscribe it on a gold record and shoot it into space, a’ la  “Voyagers I and II.”

Of course, let’s don’t rule out the “remote” (as scientists now regard it) possibility of there being some other kind of life out there.

But it might be strangely comforting to think that Miss Universe MIGHT ACTUALLY BE MISS UNIVERSE!