On a balmy Thursday afternoon in late September, more than 300 people came to the lecture hall of the Assicurazioni Generali in downtown Trieste to hear Paul Davies, of the University of Adelaide in Australia, discuss whether "we are alone in the universe." The occasion marked ICTP's first-ever public lecture. It proved such a success that more than 100 people had to be turned away at the door. Davies' lecture was one of the highlights of the ICTP's 5th conference on the chemical origins of life, which was spearheaded by biophysicist Julian Chela-Flores, an ICTP staff associate scientist. Davies, by the way, is not as optimistic as some of his colleagues about the prospects for finding life in the far reaches of the Universe.