Life... the universe is a miracle. Just consider it...
Everything, that is space, matter, time and energy all came from the nothingness... from the zero-point field. Even the mathematics describing renormalization within the vacuum calculate to nothing in the end (E=Mc^2+E=-Mc^2=0)... So in theory, the universe, when time has finished, will calculate to nothing again. No spacetimematterenergy.
This is a miracle, and use statistic far too big i cannot comprehend them. The very configuration of spacetime has its own miracles as well. Right... let's encapsulate our universe, with some whole facts.
Our Sun is 15 million km away - and even at this large distance, it is still able to give us heat. The sun is always burning away at its fuel. In the suns core, it is 15 million degree Celsius and is 5 times denser than lead. Here, hydrogen atoms convert into helium atoms. As the nuclei of hydrogen form the nuclei of helium, the superfluous loss of mass is converted into pure energy. Each second, the sun converts 4 million tones of mass and will keep it burning for another 5 billion years or so.
The sun is 70% hydrogen, 28% helium and 2% heavy elements - the stuff earth is made of. The earth came from a 'Supernovae' 6 billion years ago. All planets and stars are thought to have come from the death of Supernovae - including our own solar system, where the sun makes up 99.8% of the mass.
The surface of the sun is called the 'photosphere' and it is a melting 6000 degrees Celsius. Outside the surface of the photosphere is the 'red chromosphere.' This inner solar sphere blasts out gas called 'prominences,' hurtling billions upon billions of electrically charged particles towards earth every second.
Our sun will eventually die out in 5 billion years time - and when it does it will expand 200 times larger and will consume mercury and Venus. By that time, it will be a red giant, and will scorch the earth to a cinder. Not the smallest organic life will survive. Once the sun has stripped away its outer layers and its core be exposed, it will shrink to the size of earth and become a 'white dwarf' - as it cools down and dims, it will then become a 'black dwarf' over time, and will leave us in eternal darkness - not that it should bother us by that time - we will all be long gone.
Our Galaxy, the Milky Way has something like 200 billion stars, being 100,000 lightyears across and 10,000 lightyears thick - light years measure how far light travel in one year - light will travel around 65.5 billion miles in one year.
It takes 222 million years for our sun to orbit the galactic center. Our galaxy is one of an estimated 50 billion in the universe, where some galaxies have grouped with 12 other galaxies, whereas others have grouped in thousands! They make up 'supergalaxies', which are thought to have supermassive black holes at their centers.
We know that life, given the right conditions will thrive and teem in some of the harshest climates on earth. The elements of earth originated from the swirling disks of debris and remnant of supernovae, around 6 billion years ago that slowly began to fuse together - a process called accretion.
During the early years, the earth was highly volatile - nothing more than a molten rock, bombarded by asteroids crashing to earth for hundreds of millions of years. Then, as solar activity began to subside, everything in the observable universe began to take shape - however, life still had a long way to go, considering 'mobile matter' did not come into existence until only 4 billion years ago.
Volcanic eruptions constantly reshaped the face of the planet, forming the geological structures we see and admire today. By now, oceans had formed from volcanic condensed water vapor and also from large chunks of ice from comets carried to earth from deep space. In fact, 'Panspermia theory' states that comets could have brought 'polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons' to earth, and could have brought the origins of life to earth in the form of simple microbes. The strongest evidence of this was announced, rather bizarrely by President Clinton standing on the Whitehouse lawn, saying that NASA had discovered evidence of possible life in the subsurface of Mars.
A cabbage-sized meteorite, found recently in Antarctica, dubbed ALH84001 that seemed to have come from the 'red planet' had in it tiny features, that according to NASA scientists could have been fossilized microbes. The only problem is that the little marks are under high controversy, and not every scientist is convinced it is in fact, fossilized Martian life. The skeptics however admit, the tiny marks do have all the appearances of bacterium - but are considered far too small to be living organisms - which is all very interesting, considering this presumed life came from an entirely different planet; you would expect some biological differences wouldn't you? However, NASA did find organic chemicals inside of the meteorite, including carbonates, which also included tiny magnetic grains that can be produced by bacterium - but such grains can be produced without the aid of life.
More importantly, was a recent discovery in 2006 that seemed to prove the existence of subsurface water channels. Recent photography of the red planet displayed that a substance that looks like water had seeped out of loose rocks on the planets rocky surface - which most geologists believe itself hold all the characteristics of being formed by water itself that might have flowed around 3.5 billion years ago! This discovery will indeed make scientists think twice about astrobiology in the future, considering water is one of the fundamentals needed to sustain life.
Gases from the interior of the earth created the early atmosphere, which were mainly nitrogen and carbon dioxide. And it is believed lightning was needed as a catalyst to charge the first simple organisms. These organisms needed four basic elements; they are carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen. The first life would have been very simple, called 'prokaryotes,' which are single-celled organisms. It is thought that the single-celled life formed in hot springs, heated by the earth around 3.8 billion years ago. There is still evidence of them today, clinging to hot vents deep under the ocean... not changed after 4 billion years! It was only when they began to 'photosynthesize,' that the atmosphere changed. These photosynthesizing organisms released oxygen into the atmosphere.
Then, mulitcellular organisms came about and life began to double every 12 million years. However, its not been a steady ride for life at all! It has initially been very hard for any ecosystem to survive - this is because earth has undergone some heavily catastrophic events.
From what we know, nature first came from single-celled life, that eventually evolved into mulitcellular life - but a great extinction would wipe out nearly every life form off the planet, leaving the oceans decimated and empty. Then, very slowly, plants would begin to evolve, then the first insects, only to be wiped out in a second great extinction. This cycle repeated again and again until reptiles emerged dependant of the sea, only to be killed off again. Then dinosaurs came about, with the first birds, and fern plant life, yet to be destroyed in a 5th great extinction.
Only 100,000 years ago, homosapians (humans) appear. We have managed to survive an ice age 20,000 years ago - however, scientists warn us that the next great extinction is just around the corner. This is easy to imagine, especially when global warming accelerates at its disturbing rate.
O'k, that sums up life on earth... but what about life outside our own terrestrial sphere?
Scientists do not deny the rather, probable existence of alien life. After all, we live in a universe with infinite space and matter (well, not so much infinite matter. There are about 10^80 particles in our universe, but an infinite potential in the vacuum) - there must be an equally infinite amount of possibilities for a planet, just like earth, neither too hot, nor too cold, teeming with strange and wonderful life. However, whether alien life has the intelligence to master deep space travel is a whole other game.
Given the distances and energy required, it would far exceed a space crafts capabilities - it just seems unlikely that aliens have ever visited earth. Nevertheless, aliens must exist in my opinion - it would be selfish to presume we are the only life forms in the infinite vacuum of space and time. After all, if they are alien, what are we? In fact, during the writing of this book, astrologists discovered a planet extremely similar to our own, with a blue atmosphere, indicating that the atmosphere would probably contain similar gasses found here on earth. Only one problem... the planet a whopping 5 billion light years away... thus we won't be visiting this planet in the near-future.
Everything, that is space, matter, time and energy all came from the nothingness... from the zero-point field. Even the mathematics describing renormalization within the vacuum calculate to nothing in the end (E=Mc^2+E=-Mc^2=0)... So in theory, the universe, when time has finished, will calculate to nothing again. No spacetimematterenergy.
This is a miracle, and use statistic far too big i cannot comprehend them. The very configuration of spacetime has its own miracles as well. Right... let's encapsulate our universe, with some whole facts.
Our Sun is 15 million km away - and even at this large distance, it is still able to give us heat. The sun is always burning away at its fuel. In the suns core, it is 15 million degree Celsius and is 5 times denser than lead. Here, hydrogen atoms convert into helium atoms. As the nuclei of hydrogen form the nuclei of helium, the superfluous loss of mass is converted into pure energy. Each second, the sun converts 4 million tones of mass and will keep it burning for another 5 billion years or so.
The sun is 70% hydrogen, 28% helium and 2% heavy elements - the stuff earth is made of. The earth came from a 'Supernovae' 6 billion years ago. All planets and stars are thought to have come from the death of Supernovae - including our own solar system, where the sun makes up 99.8% of the mass.
The surface of the sun is called the 'photosphere' and it is a melting 6000 degrees Celsius. Outside the surface of the photosphere is the 'red chromosphere.' This inner solar sphere blasts out gas called 'prominences,' hurtling billions upon billions of electrically charged particles towards earth every second.
Our sun will eventually die out in 5 billion years time - and when it does it will expand 200 times larger and will consume mercury and Venus. By that time, it will be a red giant, and will scorch the earth to a cinder. Not the smallest organic life will survive. Once the sun has stripped away its outer layers and its core be exposed, it will shrink to the size of earth and become a 'white dwarf' - as it cools down and dims, it will then become a 'black dwarf' over time, and will leave us in eternal darkness - not that it should bother us by that time - we will all be long gone.
Our Galaxy, the Milky Way has something like 200 billion stars, being 100,000 lightyears across and 10,000 lightyears thick - light years measure how far light travel in one year - light will travel around 65.5 billion miles in one year.
It takes 222 million years for our sun to orbit the galactic center. Our galaxy is one of an estimated 50 billion in the universe, where some galaxies have grouped with 12 other galaxies, whereas others have grouped in thousands! They make up 'supergalaxies', which are thought to have supermassive black holes at their centers.
We know that life, given the right conditions will thrive and teem in some of the harshest climates on earth. The elements of earth originated from the swirling disks of debris and remnant of supernovae, around 6 billion years ago that slowly began to fuse together - a process called accretion.
During the early years, the earth was highly volatile - nothing more than a molten rock, bombarded by asteroids crashing to earth for hundreds of millions of years. Then, as solar activity began to subside, everything in the observable universe began to take shape - however, life still had a long way to go, considering 'mobile matter' did not come into existence until only 4 billion years ago.
Volcanic eruptions constantly reshaped the face of the planet, forming the geological structures we see and admire today. By now, oceans had formed from volcanic condensed water vapor and also from large chunks of ice from comets carried to earth from deep space. In fact, 'Panspermia theory' states that comets could have brought 'polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons' to earth, and could have brought the origins of life to earth in the form of simple microbes. The strongest evidence of this was announced, rather bizarrely by President Clinton standing on the Whitehouse lawn, saying that NASA had discovered evidence of possible life in the subsurface of Mars.
A cabbage-sized meteorite, found recently in Antarctica, dubbed ALH84001 that seemed to have come from the 'red planet' had in it tiny features, that according to NASA scientists could have been fossilized microbes. The only problem is that the little marks are under high controversy, and not every scientist is convinced it is in fact, fossilized Martian life. The skeptics however admit, the tiny marks do have all the appearances of bacterium - but are considered far too small to be living organisms - which is all very interesting, considering this presumed life came from an entirely different planet; you would expect some biological differences wouldn't you? However, NASA did find organic chemicals inside of the meteorite, including carbonates, which also included tiny magnetic grains that can be produced by bacterium - but such grains can be produced without the aid of life.
More importantly, was a recent discovery in 2006 that seemed to prove the existence of subsurface water channels. Recent photography of the red planet displayed that a substance that looks like water had seeped out of loose rocks on the planets rocky surface - which most geologists believe itself hold all the characteristics of being formed by water itself that might have flowed around 3.5 billion years ago! This discovery will indeed make scientists think twice about astrobiology in the future, considering water is one of the fundamentals needed to sustain life.
Gases from the interior of the earth created the early atmosphere, which were mainly nitrogen and carbon dioxide. And it is believed lightning was needed as a catalyst to charge the first simple organisms. These organisms needed four basic elements; they are carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen. The first life would have been very simple, called 'prokaryotes,' which are single-celled organisms. It is thought that the single-celled life formed in hot springs, heated by the earth around 3.8 billion years ago. There is still evidence of them today, clinging to hot vents deep under the ocean... not changed after 4 billion years! It was only when they began to 'photosynthesize,' that the atmosphere changed. These photosynthesizing organisms released oxygen into the atmosphere.
Then, mulitcellular organisms came about and life began to double every 12 million years. However, its not been a steady ride for life at all! It has initially been very hard for any ecosystem to survive - this is because earth has undergone some heavily catastrophic events.
From what we know, nature first came from single-celled life, that eventually evolved into mulitcellular life - but a great extinction would wipe out nearly every life form off the planet, leaving the oceans decimated and empty. Then, very slowly, plants would begin to evolve, then the first insects, only to be wiped out in a second great extinction. This cycle repeated again and again until reptiles emerged dependant of the sea, only to be killed off again. Then dinosaurs came about, with the first birds, and fern plant life, yet to be destroyed in a 5th great extinction.
Only 100,000 years ago, homosapians (humans) appear. We have managed to survive an ice age 20,000 years ago - however, scientists warn us that the next great extinction is just around the corner. This is easy to imagine, especially when global warming accelerates at its disturbing rate.
O'k, that sums up life on earth... but what about life outside our own terrestrial sphere?
Scientists do not deny the rather, probable existence of alien life. After all, we live in a universe with infinite space and matter (well, not so much infinite matter. There are about 10^80 particles in our universe, but an infinite potential in the vacuum) - there must be an equally infinite amount of possibilities for a planet, just like earth, neither too hot, nor too cold, teeming with strange and wonderful life. However, whether alien life has the intelligence to master deep space travel is a whole other game.
Given the distances and energy required, it would far exceed a space crafts capabilities - it just seems unlikely that aliens have ever visited earth. Nevertheless, aliens must exist in my opinion - it would be selfish to presume we are the only life forms in the infinite vacuum of space and time. After all, if they are alien, what are we? In fact, during the writing of this book, astrologists discovered a planet extremely similar to our own, with a blue atmosphere, indicating that the atmosphere would probably contain similar gasses found here on earth. Only one problem... the planet a whopping 5 billion light years away... thus we won't be visiting this planet in the near-future.
