The Russell Stannard Questions: Life

The following questions (Q) are taken verbatim from those poised by Russell Stannard in his 2010 book The End of Discovery [are we approaching the boundaries of the knowable?]; Oxford University Press, Oxford. I consider these typical of the sorts of modern Big Questions that are part and parcel of the philosophy of modern science, especially physical science.

My answers are based mainly with the thought of our being in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe that has been constructed by one or more Supreme Programmers. However, some of the answers apply regardless of what the nature of our ultimate reality is.

Q. Why is the universe life-friendly?

A. The universe is both bio-friendly and not bio-friendly. 99.999% (add a few more 9’s here) of the cosmic environment is decidedly bio-unfriendly and would snuff you out so quick-smart you wouldn’t know what hit you. Of course the cosmos is also bio-friendly otherwise you wouldn’t be here reading this. If you reject a supernatural explanation, that leaves coincidence, a multiverse, or software. Coincidence is stretching things since there are just so many dials that have to be set to a very narrow range. The multiverse appeals to probability statistics – think of those millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters one of whom will type “Hamlet” word-for-word – eventually. That leaves software, or in other words a Supreme Programmer programing our universe in a bio-friendly way. 

Q. Is there extraterrestrial life, and if so, how do we humans stand in comparison as regards intellectual capacity?

A. Given the vastness of the cosmos, and the sheer number of galaxies in the observable cosmos, and the numbers of stars per galaxy with associated solar systems and the number of planets per solar system not to mention possible rogue/orphan planets and how interstellar cosmic organic chemistry associated with life is, well, cosmic, etc., you would have to be pretty brave to bet the family farm arguing Planet Earth being the proverbial cosmic IT when it comes to life. Even going up the chain from the origin of life ‘living’ molecules to unicellular life to multicellular life to intelligent life to technologically advanced life forms and advocating extreme difficulty in getting from one step to the next step on up the line, there must be – if you’re a betting person – millions of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations throughout the cosmos and a goodly number in our galaxy too. Further, we humans are the new boys on the block, so the odds are that any other extraterrestrial intelligences will have been around way longer that we have, and thus have evolved greater intellectual capacity that we have yet achieved. However, the interesting bit is that once intelligence is achieved, natural selection gives way to artificial selection, and part of that artificial selection might ultimately be the transition from biological intelligence to artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence which will further evolve via artificial selection as machine intelligence designs ever better machine intelligences.



A Lifeless Universe: Part Two

You know and I know that at this point in time, our Universe is inhabited. Even if nowhere else in the cosmos, Planet Earth is host to terrestrial life. However, the Universe didn’t start off with any life, especially human life. This puts the kibosh on a certain brand of quantum philosophy, the brand that encompasses the role of the observer and the role played by probability.

Continued from Part One…

In a universe without life, it’s probably pretty meaningless to talk about concepts like free will. Then there’s that whole sackful of concepts related to good-and-evil like morals, ethics, sin, badness, righteousness, etc. and as such there’s no need for the concepts of heaven or hell. As such, scratch salvation, redemption, forgiveness, or damnation.

There are no emotions, suffering, pain, sorrow, pleasure, consciousness, or psychology. There’s obviously no disease.

There’s another bagful of concepts like the afterlife, reincarnation or resurrection that can go by the boards. Speaking of the latter, there’s no such thing in a lifeless universe as miracles. There is no such concept required like survival of the fittest; there are no wars, no death, and certainly no taxes! There were no soft science concepts around like society, culture, education (no homework), politics and government (no politicians), no economics (no bills), no religion (no thou shalt nots), no philosophy (who needs angels and pins), history (all those names, dates and places) and no environmental issues that needed addressing. There was no beauty (and no ugly either). In short, that pre-life era – that was what is known as the really good old days!

There’s one other important contrast between a lifeless universe and the universe that, in this case specifically contains and singles out humans and human concepts, and that is probability.  

Probability or uncertainty (two sides; same coin) dominates our existence. What odds my next child will be a female? What odds the next time I fly the plane will crash? What odds I win the lottery this week? What’s the probability I will be promoted this year? What’s the probability that I am normal, being of average height, weight, age, etc.? Even in science as performed by humans, probability or uncertainty dominates. Every measurement has error bars. Every forecast has some degree of uncertainty. Even the Sun rising tomorrow is not absolutely guaranteed (though I wouldn’t lose any sleep over that unlikely event). Every theory can ultimately be found to be wrong or incomplete. And just where is that damn electron anyway?

The fundamental question is, is probability an intrinsic property of Mother Nature like mass and gravity, or is it a human invention; a human concept? IMHO, there are no error bars in Mother Nature’s reality. Mother Nature knows the temperature is this, not around this but within this range. Mother Nature notes it will rain tomorrow, not just a chance of showers. Mother Nature knows that the Sun will rise tomorrow even though it will go nova the day after that. Mother Nature knew that Einstein’s theory of gravity was more precise than Newton’s theory of gravity millennia before Newton or Einstein was conceived of in anyone philosophy. And Mother Nature knows exactly where that damn electron is because the electron is. 

Any observer, via instrumentation or via the five senses, usually has to interpret what that observation actually represents – it’s not always obvious. If it was, science would have concluded its work decades ago, or just be engaged in refining things from the tenth to the twelfth decimal place. Interpretation – the choice between two or more possibilities – well that’s weighing probabilities.

* We’ve all observed a cat rubbing its head along an object. What’s the probability the cat is putting its scent on the object or the probability does it have an itch to scratch?

* We might have observed a boat passing away from us and disappearing over the horizon. Is this because the Earth is probably round or did the boat probably sink?

* In quantum physics, observations suggest a wave-particle duality. But is it more probably a wave or is it more likely a particle? 

* Is that unusual light in the sky probably an alien spaceship or is it probably a weather balloon?

* Does viewing a sunrise suggest t you that the Sun probably goes around the Earth or that the Earth probably is rotating around its axis?

* You spot that tornado on the horizon – maybe it will miss you or maybe it won’t. What are the odds? It certainly can’t both hit you and miss you at the same time and place.

* Is Pluto probably a real planet or isn’t it (and does it even cosmically matter)?

* My friend has a cold. I have a cold. Did I probably catch his or did he probably catch mine or was there probably something contagious in the meal we shared several nights ago?

* That Sasquatch I saw. Was it probably too much to drink or was it probably real and if it was real was it probably a bear or was it probably an unknown primate?

* Did the apple fall to earth because it’s probably seeking its natural place or was it probably due to an external force called gravity?

* Is Schrodinger’s cat probably dead or probably alive? It can’t be both simultaneously despite what quantum physics suggest.

* Why is the night sky dark? Is it probably because the Sun’s not shining in the sky at night or probably because the Universe is expanding or probably because there’s only a finite number of stars and galaxies giving off light.

* Why did the chicken cross the road this morning? You may not know (though you can probably come up with a half-dozen possibilities) but the chicken probably does.

There’s little doubt in my mind that to all of these probably observations there is but one answer(s). In many cases we’ve sussed out the answer(s). We don’t have the answer(s) in all the cases. I say answer(s) because there can be more than one answer acting jointly, like there really was a Sasquatch and yes, you were also really, really drunk; yes the Earth is round, but yes, the boat sank as well. But its an either/or certainty of an explanation(s), not a bit of both ways by sometimes probably having your cake and sometimes probably eating it too, probability, as in sometimes the apple falls to earth because it is seeking its natural place and sometimes it falls to earth because of gravity; or that Pluto is a planet on odd days or in months containing an “R” and not a planet on even days or non-“R” months; or sometimes the night sky is dark because the Sun isn’t in the sky, but at other times the night sky is dark because the Universe is expanding and at yet even on other occasions its only dark because there’s only a finite number of stars and galaxies.

The bottom line is that the Universe isn’t governed by probability. Given identical sets of circumstances or conditions, the outcomes remain the same. Observers and observations are irrelevant. That’s made crystal clear during all those millennia the Universe was observer-free.   

A Lifeless Universe: Part One

You know and I know that at this point in time, our Universe is inhabited. Even if nowhere else in the cosmos, Planet Earth is host to terrestrial life, from the humble bacteria through to plants, invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. In terms of sheer numbers of species and total biomass, microbes and insects rule the roost, though humans alone pat themselves on the back. However, the Universe didn’t start off with any life, especially human life. This puts the kibosh on a certain brand of quantum metaphysics, the brand that encompasses the role of the observer and the role played by probability.

I think everyone would agree that before they were thought of in anyone’s philosophy, the Universe existed. You’d agree that the Universe existed before humans existed, unless you’re one of those fundamentalists who interpret the Book of Genesis literally, and even then there were a few days for the Universe to enjoy a pre-human existence. If you’re not one of those extreme right wing all-things-literal Christians, then you’d go along with the Universe existing before life, any kind of life, arose on Terra Firma (or anywhere else in the cosmos for that matter). You’d also have to go along with the notion that the Universe existed before the Earth (and therefore the Sun and solar system) existed, since the parent (the Universe) has to exist before the offspring (Earth, Sun and solar system). In fact, to bring this string to its logical conclusion, the Universe existed even before our home parent galaxy, the Milky Way existed.

The origin of our Universe via that Big Bang event was roughly 13.7 billion years ago. Our own galaxy didn’t come into its own until three plus billion years post Big Bang. Planet Earth (plus Sun and solar system) came about some 4.5 billion years ago; the first stirrings of what we’d call life happened on Earth within a half a billion years of Earth’s origin event. If you want to equate life in the Universe with life on Earth (terrestrial biology is the proverbial IT), then the Universe has been lifeless for the first 9.7 billion years of its existence.

Our Universe is bio-friendly otherwise we wouldn’t be here to discuss the issue. That’s often termed the Weak Anthropic Principle. A bio-friendly Universe is a Goldilocks Universe, albeit a dangerous Goldilocks Universe with lots of places that are too hot or too cold or otherwise not quite right and not quite bio-friendly. But, any port in a storm.

But before life was thought of in anyone’s (not that there was anyone) philosophy, we’re certain that:

* Chemistry still happened.

* Stars still shined and photons still did their photon thing.

* Gravity still grabbed; Black Holes still formed.

* Radioactivity decay still proceeded.

* Neutrinos still whizzed their merry way along the cosmic byways and pathways.

* Electrons still quantum hopped from orbit to orbit giving off and absorbing energy.

* Quarks still carried on their threesome relationships inside protons and neutrons.

Okay, there clearly was a time when the cosmos was lifeless and the above were cosmic truisms. There clearly might come such a time again if Planet Earth is the proverbial IT when it comes to the life part of “life, the Universe and everything”. Humans aren’t immortal; Planet Earth isn’t immortal, and as I said earlier, the Universe can be a dangerous place. Perhaps humans don’t even need assistance from the Universe at large to bring about their extinction and the extinction of all life on Earth. If life on Earth goes kaput, then:

* Hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderstorms, blizzards, floods and droughts will still happen on Terra Firma.

* Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, avalanches, Ice Ages, tsunamis, meteor impacts, erosion, mountain building, and continental drift will still happen on Terra Firma.

* The tides will still ebb and flow; the Moon still waxes and wanes.

Now the $64,000 question is why is a lifeless Universe of any interest whatsoever? The answer is “observers”, or in the case of a lifeless Universe, “no observers”.

Many, especially the religious, think the Universe had a purpose, and that was to be fruitful and produce life, intelligence and consciousness, a way of the Universe being able to contemplate its own navel. That’s often termed the Strong Anthropic Principle. Most scientists give that the thumbs down on the grounds that the Universe just is. The Universe doesn’t have a consciousness, or a deity controlling it, and therefore the cosmos can’t have a purpose to its existence, nor a ways and means that it can consciously direct itself toward such a goal.

However, many quantum physicists suggest that the Universe cannot have achieved a reality until such time as observers (life) appeared to give the Universe reality. That’s often termed the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. The idea is that all possible realities exist in a state of superposition and only one becomes reality when someone actually observes and forces the numerous possibilities down to one certainty. All possible realities are grouped together and termed the probability wave-function or wave of probability. When crunch-comes-crunch and someone peeks, Mother Nature is forced to make a decision, the wave-function collapses and one and only one certainty results.

Until life appeared then, the Universe was in a superposition of all possible realities, a wave-function that was a composite of all possibilities. That first observer hence collapsed the wave-function of near infinite possibilities down to one reality. Or is that just so much bovine fertilizer?

Now between the time of the creation, that Big Bang event some 13.7 billion years ago, and the time of that first observer arising, the cosmos expanded and evolved. Stars formed, solar systems formed, galaxies formed, and so on. Now all that suggests that there was one reality, one chain of events, and a causality that was universal – the Universe was not in a composite of all possible states of reality even while no life existed. It’s silly to think that that ever first proto-cell billions of years ago determined the single structure or reality of the Universe we see around us today. For observers to have come into being, the Universe had to have already been in a state of being. Therefore, the Copenhagen Interpretation of all things quantum is utter nonsense.

So, does the Universe exist even if nobody is looking? Yes! Did the Universe exist even when there was nobody to look? Yes! Are observers relevant? No!

Having settled the observer question, let’s move on to the next phase.

To be continued…

Jovian Life: The Moons Versus the Planets: Part Three

In our solar system, the planets are divided between the inner terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars and of course the Earth) and the outer gas giants, collectively called the Jovian planets (after Jupiter, but including Saturn, Uranus and Neptune), which along with their many moons form the Jovian system. Since it’s easier to look in our own planetary backyard neighbourhood first for alien life, there’s been much speculation about what pieces of solar system real estate, if any, might be suitable abodes for extraterrestrial life. While Mars has always been top-of-the-pops, a once heavily favoured Venus fell by the wayside a while back, only to be replaced with a few bits of real estate somewhat further out. It’s those “somewhat further out” bits of real estate that are now under-the-gun. While most speculation is on selected Jovian satellites, I put the accent on the parent bodies.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Uranus: CHON: Uranus is similar in atmospheric and chemical composition to Neptune (see below), but both are slightly different in their chemical composition than their larger gas giant sisters, Jupiter and Saturn. As such, astronomers sometimes place them in a separate category called the "ice giants" because these planets contain a lot of – wait for it – “ices” like water (the O in CHON), ammonia (the N in CHON), methane plus other hydrocarbons (your C and your H in CHON) that includes ethane, acetylene, methylacetylene, and diacetylene. In short, instead of say liquid water vapor, you have ice crystals. Uranus's atmosphere is however similar to the “gas giants” in having the majority of its stuff consists of hydrogen and helium, hence followed by methane (there’s some more of your C). Even more C is present in carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide which has been detected. While carbon consists of only about 3% of the composition of Uranus, that’s still vastly more carbon relative to the solar percentage, so Uranus has been enriched in carbon.

Uranus: Environment: Uranus (as well as Neptune), are often refereed to as the “ice giants” instead of the “gas giants” as noted above. One other distinction is that relative to Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus (and Neptune) are way smaller in volume. That apart, the “ice giants” are way more akin to the “gas giants” than to any of the Jovian moons or any of the terrestrial planets for that matter, both in terms of composition and in terms of relative volume. While pretty god-awful from a human’s perspective, some hardy microbes might love to call Uranus home.

Uranus: Mixing: Any lump of gas molecules, or molecules in a liquid, almost by definition, isn’t going to sit still, unlike say the molecules in a lump of rock. A puff of smoke emitted into Earth’s atmosphere gets dispersed; a drop of ink plonked into a bowl of water will equally get dispersed, or mixed in and throughout.  I’d expect nothing less in the non-solid soupy atmosphere of Uranus. In any event, wind speeds have been clocked at up to 900 km/hour – that’s pretty breezy!

Uranus: Energy: Uranus radiates just ever slightly more heat than it receives in the form of solar radiation. In case you think that makes Uranus frigid through-and-through, you’d be wrong. The interior core temperature still approaches over ten to twenty times the maximum temperature of your average home oven! So, while solar energy is just about zilch, energy percolating upwards nevertheless is present for utilization by the locals – if any. However, of all the four Jovian planets, Uranus is probably the least likely planet to have achieved the distinction of harbouring local (Uranian) life forms.

Neptune: CHON: Neptune’s atmosphere is mainly, as you’d expect one that consists mainly of hydrogen and helium, but with substantial amounts of water, ammonia and methane. CHON is present, as are various sulphide compounds.

Neptune: Environment: While the top of the atmosphere is very cold, as you’d expect being so far out from the Sun, the interior core is hot indeed – many thousands of degrees hot. Obviously, somewhere in-between, you’ll get a happy Goldilocks medium as far as biology is concerned.

Neptune: Mixing: Neptune has lots of varied weather and storm systems, all contributing to atmospheric mixing. The temperature differential between interior temperatures and the atmospheric ‘surface’ temperatures, like on Earth, will drive wind systems leading to mixing of the chemicals that make up the CHON-rich atmosphere

Neptune: Energy: Despite being farther away from the Sun than Uranus, Neptune radiates quite a bit more heat than it actually receives from Sol. In fact, slightly over two and a half times more heat. From the point of view of this analysis, the exact reason(s) aren’t overly relevant, just the fact that it does so. Of course being so very, very far away from the Sun there’s no chance in hell of photosynthesis; chemosynthesis is possible, even probable.

In conclusion, I suggest that the soupy atmospheres of the giant planets have all the fundamentals required not only for the origin of life, but long-term habitability for any biological organisms that have been and are being provided with appropriate CHON, a Goldilocks environment (at least in places), an energy supply, and mixing. The CHON box is ticked on all four Jovian planets. With respect to CHON, there are probably all sorts of way more complex organic molecules present in the four Jovian atmospheres but in such relatively small quantities that are dispersed widely and deeply so as to have escaped detection to date from our relatively faraway fly-by and orbiting probes. The habitable environment box on all four Jovian planets is also ticked; ditto the mixing box; and ditto the available energy supply box. You also have had over four and a half billion years for interesting biological happenings to have occurred. In addition, there’s a lot of volume in each of the Jovian planets for interesting stuff to happen in. The odds of things all coming and getting their act together in a small pond is small relative to a large ocean.

That all four Jovian planets have evolved life is problematical; that at least one has become a biological abode is much more certain, IMHO. Throw in one or more of their satellites like Europa and Enceladus that offer a liquid water ocean environment – well that’s a bonus. On top of all that, the Jovian planets have the highest gravities apart from the Sun. Now that means they suck in more than their fair share of other solar system debris – like comets and asteroids. Now comets and asteroids, the leftovers of that initial stuff out of which our solar system was made, also tend to be rich in CHON. No doubt they, via impacts with the Jovian planets, have contributed their CHON bit to the already potential suitability of those abodes as habitable abodes.

So what sort of Jovian life might we expect? On Planet Earth there is a sharp boundary between the atmosphere and the hydrosphere. On the four Jovian planets one just slowly merges into the other as one goes deeper and deeper. Terrestrial but airborne microbes, bacteria, germs, and other single-celled beasties, and their marine equivalents, like plankton and other unicellular critters, occupy both environments and are happy little campers. There’s no reason for there not to be Jovian equivalents that ‘swim’ and multiply in whatever region of the various four varieties of Jovian atmospheric ‘soups’ that have a comfortable, Goldilocks temperature regime. Of course that Goldilocks region could extend over hundreds of vertical kilometres in range. Some organisms might be better adapted to the thinner cooler upper regions; others to the murkier but warmer depths. Regardless, it gets dark fast so eyesight in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum might be problematical. Of course phosphoresce, not all that uncommon in marine life here on Earth, can’t be ruled out of course.    

If simple life forms originated and evolved on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and/or Neptune, then more complex and far larger ‘marine’ and ‘aerial’ life forms might be present too. Their trick, in order to stay in the Goldilocks zone, will be to have evolved the capability to maintain neutral buoyancy, but also to be able to rise if turbulence pushed them downwards towards greater heat; be able to sink if currents push them too high where chill factors come into prominence. So ‘gas bag’ floaters or ‘fish’ with ‘airbags’ might be possible Jovian alien life-forms. There’s no reason such critters couldn’t have developed a relatively sophisticated degree of intelligence. It’s possible to have intelligence without the means of developing technology as our whales and dolphins and even the humble octopus demonstrate.

The fly in the ointment is that our on-site investigation is going to prove to be an extremely daunting technological task, one that most certainly won’t happen in the next several decades – probably much longer. In the short term, the best bet is to use remote spectroscopic analysis of the atmospheric ‘surfaces’ or actual surfaces (in the case of the satellites) to identify biological signatures – compounds that just cannot be accounted for by non-biological processes. An example would be the pinkish-red areas on Europa noted above. 

Jovian Life: The Moons Versus the Planets: Part Two

In our solar system, the planets are divided between the inner terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars and of course the Earth) and the outer gas giants, collectively called the Jovian planets (after Jupiter, but including Saturn, Uranus and Neptune), which along with their many moons form the Jovian system. Since it’s easier to look in our own planetary backyard neighbourhood first for alien life, there’s been much speculation about what pieces of solar system real estate, if any, might be suitable abodes for extraterrestrial life. While Mars has always been top-of-the-pops, a once heavily favoured Venus fell by the wayside a while back, only to be replaced with a few bits of real estate somewhat further out. It’s those “somewhat further out” bits of real estate that are now under-the-gun. While most speculation is on selected Jovian satellites, I put the accent on the parent bodies.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Now on to the major players! It’s time to introduce the main players, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and those four essentials: CHON, environment, mixing and energy. If there is life-as-we-know-it on these four planets, then we need CHON, we need a proper environment, we need mixing to bring essentials together at one time and place, and we need a source(s) of energy.

One clarification is in order first. Although the Jovian planets are usually called “gas giants”, that is a slight misnaming. While it’s true that relative to Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, the Jovian planets are indeed great big balls of gas, they still must have at their centre a solid rocky core, due to, if for no other reason, that over 4.5 billion years of their existence, asteroids, maybe even small planets, meteors, dust, and comets have all slammed into them. The rocky stuff, ultimately, must sink to the bottom forming a solid heavy element core. With that clarification made, let’s see what there is to be speculated upon. 

Jupiter: CHON: Jupiter, a gas giant, is composed mainly of molecular hydrogen (the H in CHON) and helium (much like the Sun’s composition and in roughly the same ratios). There are certainly ammonia (probably as ice crystals) and ammonia compounds (like ammonium hydrosulphide) in the atmosphere, adding nitrogen (the N in CHON) to the mix. Methane (which contains the C in CHON), as does the carbon contained in carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide are also present in the upper atmosphere. Water vapour (the O in CHON) is certainly present, even though in small proportions relative to hydrogen and helium. The colourful bands of latitude could easily be suggestive of complex, even organic chemistry involving not only CHON but sulphur and phosphorus and other trace elements. The upper atmosphere of Jupiter contains small amounts of simple hydrocarbons such as ethane and acetylene, which forms from methane under the influence of the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation and the highly charged particles incoming from the Jupiter’s magnetosphere.   

Jupiter: Environment: There’s no disputing that the cloud tops are bitterly cold; the deep interior is way too hot. But, that alone suggests that there will be a Goldilocks area in-between, probably extending vertically for hundreds of kilometres, and extending as well horizontally around the globe. That volume, given Jupiter’s size, comprises a lot of Goldilocks territory. 

Jupiter: Mixing: Since Jupiter has a very hot interior core and the top of the atmosphere is extremely cold, and since heat rises and cold descends, that alone suggests that mixing in Jupiter’s primarily gaseous/quasi-fluid body must take place. Quite apart from that, all one needs to do is view time-lapse photography of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere to see all the turbulent motion that takes place. A tranquil pond Jupiter isn’t.

Jupiter: Energy – Solar energy is highly unlikely to drive any Jovian biology because the atmosphere is very thick, and just like with our terrestrial oceans, things get very dark very quickly as one descends. However, chemical energy is a possibility, like that which drives terrestrial hydrothermal vent communities. Then there’s infrared (instead of visible) radiation. Jupiter radiates much more heat that it receives from the Sun, the heat being slowly radiated outward from Jupiter’s original quota of primordial heat energy largely stored in the core of the planet.  Jupiter is a fantastic place to visit if you’re fond of thunderstorms. Lightning really lights up the Jupiter’s skies. Lightning is a prime source of energy for driving chemical reactions. Translated, all up, Jupiter is awash with potentially useful energy sources to drive any local biology.

Saturn: CHON: The atmosphere of Saturn (which is what the mainly planet is – a ball of gas) consists of one hell of a lot of molecular hydrogen and some helium, a really skewed ratio relative to those elements found in the Sun, but that’s another story. However, it does explain why Saturn, if you could find a freshwater ‘pond’ large enough, would float in it! That aside, the atmosphere contains trace amounts of ammonia (there’s your nitrogen), acetylene, ethane and methane (and your carbon), plus phosphine - all have been detected. The upper atmosphere has clouds composed of ammonia crystals, while the lower atmospheric clouds appear to be composed of ammonium hydrosulfide and/or water (thus some oxygen).

Saturn: Environment: The same discussion that applies to Jupiter applies to Saturn, although because Saturn is a smaller planet (albeit massive relative to Earth) the habitable volume of Saturn’s quasi-liquid atmosphere will be somewhat less.

Saturn: Mixing: Saturn also has that hot interior, cold exterior dichotomy that exists in this gaseous/fluid planetary ball. It’s akin to the convection that occurs when you heat water on your stove. Hot water rises; cooler water descends. And while not as dramatic as time-lapse films of Jupiter’s atmosphere, it’s also obvious that Saturn’s visual ‘surface’ is anything but tranquil. In fact the winds on Saturn are among the highest of any planetary body in the solar system. However, being farther from the Sun, Saturn’s chemistry is not going to be quite as dramatic as closer-in Jupiter, and thus Saturn’s atmospheric ‘surface’ is a lot blander appearing.

Saturn: Energy – As is the case for Jupiter, and for much the same reason, solar energy (photosynthesis) is out on Saturn; chemical energy and infrared radiation (heat energy) will be the way to go. Saturn also radiates more heat that it receives from the Sun – two and a half times more in fact; Saturn is also a fantastic place to visit if you’re fond of thunderstorms. Lightning also lights up the skies of Saturn.

To be continued...

UFOs Not, Because E.T. Isn’t: Part One

Seeing as how the Universe is some 13.7 billion years old, and seeing as how the current human species (defined as Homo sapiens) has been around for only some 100,000 years (give or take), then I have to ask, is it logical to assume that we’re the proverbial ‘It’? If the answer should prove to be ‘yes’, if terrestrial life and humanity is the be all and end all of life in the Universe, then UFOs can’t have anything to do with extraterrestrials.

Some people say that terrestrial life is the only life in the cosmos, therefore, whatever UFOs are, they can’t have anything to do with aliens. That’s despite the fact that there are ‘billions and billions’ of possible sites in the Universe where life could take hold, evolve and ultimately boldly go.

A few UFO skeptics do tone down that argument by acknowledging that extraterrestrials exist as in extraterrestrial microbes, plants and multi-cellular animals but extraterrestrial intelligence doesn’t. That still means that UFOs have bugger-all to do with aliens. Even if intelligence exists, only humans have invented technology, and even if aliens have invented technology, well those dumb bastards exterminated themselves within a short time frame after discovering chemical, biological and radiological warfare technology. The upshot, E.T. isn’t; UFOs therefore aren’t.

So are we alone in the Universe? That’s a question that’s been asked by millions over the eons, without, to date resolution. Of course the word ‘alone’ implies alone in the sense of whether or not there exists elsewhere in the cosmos our rough equals; more likely as not betters. We want to get to know our neighbours across the street, not their pets, or their plants. The standard gut-feeling answer to the question usually revolves around how vast the Universe is, and surely, given the billions and billions of stars in our galaxy and the existence of billions and billions of galaxies each with billions and billions of stars, etc. and the vastness of time, surely we can’t be the proverbial ‘It’.

There’s unfortunately one slight flaw in that statistical approach. There’s a rather long chain of events that have to happen, hurdles to be jumped, in order to get from the elements of star-stuff to biological cosmic neighbours. Depending on whom you talk to, that chain can be extremely long indeed. The point is, if any one factor in that chain of causality has a very low probability of coming to pass, it matters not one bit whether or not all the other factors are extremely probable. The overall result is going to be low. If any one factor is as close to zero as makes no odds, then the overall answer will also be as close to zero as makes no odds. Certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by zero multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty ultimately equals zero!

It’s been pointed out by others, and I tend to have to agree, that astronomers (being physical scientists) tend to be much more optimistic and supportive of the notion that advanced life forms in the Universe - extraterrestrial intelligences - are a dime-a-dozen. That’s relative to biologists (being life scientists), who considerably hedge their bets and who it must be said are presumably better qualified to pass judgments. So, taking things from a more biological perspective, what’s what?

With 13.7 billion years to play with since the origin of our Universe (that Big Bang event); with billions and billions of stars in our own galaxy alone; with billions and billions of galaxies scattered throughout the cosmos each with billions and billions of stars therein, with extra-solar planets being discovered around many of those stars in our own galaxy at a rapid rate of knots, (and by implication planetary systems exist in other galaxies as well); with the chemical elements required for life commonplace throughout the Universe; with the principles of Darwinian evolution given as universal, what odds that we are really the proverbial ‘It’? And what are the implications for extraterrestrial UFOs?

When it comes down to the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), it’s only our own Milky Way Galaxy we need concern ourselves with. Even I acknowledge that though extraterrestrial civilizations exist in other galaxies, travel times between galaxies quickly exceed any logical transit times available, even when invoking a “Star Trek” warp drive. Interstellar travel, travel within the confines of our own galaxy, however is quite another matter. Still, our own galaxy gives us some ten billion years to play around with; billions and billions of stars and no doubt planets, those abundant chemical elements, and Darwinian principles. Again, it would be a very brave soul to suggest, given those sorts of statistics, that we are, even in our own galaxy, the proverbial ‘It’; not just the new kid on the block, but the first and only kid on the block.

Not even a UFO ETH skeptic like a certain SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) scientist of my acquaintance would argue we’re the proverbial ‘It’ – it would make a mockery of his own chosen career path.

So in summary to that first objection that only terrestrial life exists: 1) The Universe is a bio-friendly Goldilocks Universe – we’re here after all. 2) There is plenty of real estate in the cosmos that could give rise to and host hardy microbial life forms. 3) The appropriate chemicals, organic chemicals, and biochemicals; appropriate life producing and sustaining chemistry full stop, are present throughout the cosmos. 4) There’s been a massive amount of time for life to originate, evolve, survive, thrive and migrate.

Ultimately, what this all boils down to; the three key points here, are whether or not extraterrestrial intelligence exists, and if so, does extraterrestrial technology, technology that can get E.T. from there to here, evolve of necessity? Lastly, having evolved a sophisticated advanced boldly going technology, how long do you have it? Translated, we need to answer whether or not Darwinian evolution, natural selection, will favor intelligence, technology and long-term survival.

Intelligence first: 

Some people object to the UFO ETH on the grounds that we (humans) are the proverbial be-all-and-end-all of the cosmos in terms of overall smarts and being tool makers – there are no other advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, therefore UFOs can not have anything to with extraterrestrial intelligence. Translated, they adopt the more religious point of view that humans (and human intelligence) were created in the image of God and therefore no other intelligences can exist. No alien intelligence means no-go to the UFO ETH.

The answer to that issue, that extraterrestrial life exists, but not extraterrestrial intelligence (for religious reasons or otherwise), well, the answer is yet again that not even respectable SETI scientists would propose this as an objection to the UFO ETH since again that would undermine their own work. Clearly the evolution of intelligence, albeit being just one of many competing traits for biological survival-of-the-fittest, does have ultimate survival value. The Earth provides a practical example of that. Many species can be attributed to having a reasonable degree of ability to figure things out, and that it is possible to evolve extremely high levels of intelligence is witnessed by us existing. If Mother Nature can evolve one biological highly intelligent species, She can do it again, and again, and again on other worlds. 

Now based on a statistical sample of one, it’s been a long tough road to get from microbes to ferns to jellyfish to sharks to newts to crocodiles to crows to cattle. Once you have multicellular critters (like ferns and cows) that have survived and thrived in a reasonably stable part of the Universe over many generations, will they evolve into intelligence? I mean finding an extraterrestrial equivalent of a trilobite is all well and good, but we want to find beings more like ourselves. Again, no alien intelligences translate into UFOs having zip to do with aliens.

The issue now is having evolved to a multicellular stage (like magpies and buffalo), will organisms develop some higher brain function? Is there any further evolutionary advantage towards increasing one’s intelligence? By going back to our sample of one, if Earth is any guide, the answer is roughly ‘not likely’. There are millions of multicellular species that have existed, and do exist, on Planet Earth. There are apparently only a very few species that have evolved something beyond the minimum level of brain power required for their day-to-day survival. That doesn’t inspire confidence that intelligence has inevitable value as a means of survival.

By far and away, most multicellular critters just operate on pure instinct and don’t (can’t) stop to figure things out (far less stop to smell and appreciate the roses) - but, there are a few exceptions.  Many wild birds would put our everyday companion animals to shame in the IQ department. I mean I adore my cats, but a little Einstein they’re not. Whales and dolphins have also been credited with being in the higher IQ bracket; ditto our close primate cousins. In the invertebrate kingdom, the octopus is pretty smart – by invertebrate standards (and then some if one is honest). However, on balance, most multicellular critters put their evolutionary strategies into something other than higher brain functions. Take my cats. Is it to their survival advantage to ‘figure things out’ or to  just be a bit faster afoot, have a bit more acute hearing, have sharper vision? Nearly all organisms put their survival abilities into something other than pure brain-power. Clearly brain-power has survival-of-the-fittest attributes. But, intelligence is not the only game in town, and therefore doesn’t have what I’d call any evolutionary ‘certainty’ or destiny.  However, it would be illogical to say that developing intelligence, the ability to figure things out, isn’t valuable and doesn’t have any survival value; it’s just that if you were to list all the multicellular animal species on Planet Earth, very few would have an IQ of even one (the human average is 100). So, let’s say intelligence is somewhere between near certainty and highly improbable. That’s a rather ‘have your cake and eat it too’ position.

IMHO, the bottom line is that intelligence, the ability to figure things out, has evolutionary survival value and will tend to be selected for, and thus over time, there will tend to have life forms that have evolved ever higher IQ’s. Here on Earth, just about all mammals and birds, and some exceptional invertebrates (the cephalopods like squid and the octopus), have reasonable IQ’s at least when compared to bacteria, plants, insects, fish, etc. Of course just as some kinds of organisms are faster than others, or have keener senses of sight or smell or hearing, not all advanced organisms are going to end up equal in the IQ stakes. But, the fact remains, the ability to think, to figure things out, can only increase your odds of survival and leaving behind more offspring.

To be continued...

Orphaned Rogue Interstellar Planets

Lots of effort has been put into discovering the existence of extra-solar planets and thus confirming that our own solar system isn’t some sort of anomaly. Hundreds of extra-solar planets have now been found and in the databanks, with more being found every week.  Meantime, there’s a whole other set of extra-solar planetary objects or abodes, probably undetectable with even foreseeable technology. These extra-solar abodes are the sunless orphans (technically termed ‘rogue planets’ or maybe ‘interstellar planets’) that exist in deep interstellar (perhaps even intergalactic) space itself. The number of orphaned interstellar planets could easily equal, or even vastly exceed, all the planets in all the solar systems in the Milky Way Galaxy combined. Could such orphans expand the range of abodes for life in the cosmos? There is a real possibility that orphan planets could host viable communities (ecosystems) of microbes based on chemosynthesis.

Our solar system today probably seems like a pretty well ordered place – it runs like clockwork, is predictable, and it’s pretty benign on the whole. But, it was not always so, and may not always remain that way in the future. In those early chaotic when the proto-sun and the proto-planets were forming, the orbital dynamics were anything but well ordered. Collisions and close encounters between these proto-objects, and associated interacting gravitational forces at play meant that some bodies spiraled into the proto-sun; others in their gravitational dances were ejected, in a slingshot sort of way, from the proto-solar system altogether. 

In the future, as our sun and solar system along with hundreds of thousands of other ‘nearby’ suns (stars) orbit the galactic center, distances between stars vary, sometime coming close enough for their respective gravitational forces to cause another dance and throw monkey wrenches into the peace and tranquility and well-ordered-ness of the respective stellar systems and debris (like planets orbiting their parent suns). As before, some objects could be perturbed and dislodged and fall into their sun, or be ejected from the gravitational control of that sun altogether and head out into space and a lonely, endless night, existence.  Also, the ejection process will be alive and well in binary (tug of war) star systems (and there are an awful lot of them about).

While there’s nothing to be said for those unfortunate bodies (and life forms – if any) that get cataclysmically into their parent suns, it’s not quite ‘The End’ for those now sunless orphans. There could be multi-thousands (or more) of orphaned planets (of all sizes and makeup) in deep space beyond the bright light and solar energy of a sun. There could be an orphan planet within a light year of us and we’d never know or suspect.

Could orphan planets form all by themselves in the depths of lonely space? Well, if a large interstellar dust and gas cloud can gravitationally collapse to form a star(s) and associated stellar (solar) system, I fail to see why a smaller interstellar dust and gas cloud couldn’t collapse to form a planet sized object, probably a ‘failed star’ like a Jupiter, maybe with moons. From that of course it is easy to extrapolate and suggest such a Jovian ‘failed star’ might have smaller abodes (planets) form and orbit same – a nearly invisible solar system. Or perhaps it’s just an orphan planet with associated moons. Either definition amounts to the same thing – a rose by any other name applies.

Regardless of initial origin, conventional wisdom would suggest that these orphans must be lifeless, even if before the event they had life.

When I was a high school biology student (1962-63), it was absolutely gospel (and no correspondence would be entered into contrary) that our sun was the be all and end all of the existence of terrestrial life. No sun; no life. All life ultimately depended on photosynthetic plants which in turn couldn’t exist without sunlight. Even then however I seem to recall speculation about the possibility of a non-photosynthetic based ecology in the atmosphere of Jupiter which gladdened my heart no end - however, it wasn‘t Jupiter that broke the photosynthetic mold, but good old Mother Earth herself. So gospel ain’t gospel any longer! Today we know about chemosynthesis (organisms that can produce organics from inorganic substances and derive energy from the process.)

A well known, if little understood example of chemosynthesis are the colonies of microbes (dubbed ‘rusticles’) that are eating the iron structure of the RMS Titanic, resting some four kilometers below the surface of the North Atlantic. Within another generation or two, the famous shipwreck will have been basically consumed by microbes, without any benefit bestowed by our sun.

But, an orphaned planet has severe problems quite apart from a lack of solar energy. What about heat? Sources of heat (apart from a parent sun) include gravitational contraction, radioactivity, chemical activity, friction, etc. So heat shouldn’t be too much of a problem for some planetary abodes. Rocky planets like Earth have radioactive elements that partly comprise their crusts and interiors, and radioactive decay gives off heat, and rock is a good insulator. I doubt if chemical activity or friction will contribute much, but for Jupiter-sized planets, gravitational contraction means that these types of planets (like Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune) give off more heat energy than they receive from the sun.

Of course friction could be a source of heat in some rare cases. One other heating scenario is plausible if an orphan planet had a satellite(s) of the right composition. The satellite(s) might be warmed by tidal frictional forces courtesy of their parent orphaned planet akin to what we observe on Io and Europa. These satellites are heated by the effects of Jupiter’s tidal attractions on the interiors of these moons which get flexed and stretched and compressed, ever alternating between extremes. The resulting friction results in heating. An alternative version could be two orphaned planets of roughly the same size, orbiting each other in relatively close proximity. Each would mutually tidally heat the other, but only for a while. You can’t produce heat energy out of nothing, and the price paid would be their orbital separation increasing until the gravitational bonds weaken so much that you’d have – for all intents and purposes – two separate orphaned planets. This is akin to our own Moon which is retreating from Mother Earth, albeit ever so slowly, over time.

But heat tends to be the final end waste product in any energy chain of events. Heat itself is not useful as an energy source for living things; albeit quite useful in contributing to the environmental friendliness in which organisms thrive, like keeping temperatures suitable for liquid water or for biochemical reactions. I mean an infrared lamp may feel real good, but it’s not providing you with any calories!

Could one have an origin of life (biogenesis) event on an orphaned planet? Why not, providing you had the appropriate chemicals, all mixing it up in an appropriate liquid medium (water most likely), and an energy source(s), and lots of time.

So, an orphan planet could have had a biogenesis event, coupled with suitable chemicals for chemosynthesis and heat. What more do you want! Well, are there any positives to be had?

Are there any obvious advantages to being a life form on an orphan planet? I think so. What if your initial parent star were a variable star, or a very massive star that’s going to have a very short lifespan, maybe terminate in a supernova - advantage orphan. Maybe your initial orbit was so lopsided (elliptical) that you alternatively froze and fried – advantage orphan. Gravitational (tidal) locking – keeping one hemisphere always turned toward one point, say the surface of your parent star – causing temperature extremes, is now irrelevant. The tilt of your axis (which can also cause extremes in heating/cooling is now also irrelevant. Your weather, such as it is, would be relatively gentle without solar energy driving it. Then too, inhabiting deep space via-a-visa crowded debris filled solar system reduces drastically those nasty collision impacts. A thick Jovian (Jupiter) type atmosphere or thick ice cap is probably good shielding from radiation, though even a nearby supernova might be bad news. You’re also insulated from all those nasty bug-eyed-monster alien types. They can easily find solar systems, but not orphans. In any event, your orphan planet isn’t very desirable real estate to alien invaders!

One day, in the not too distant future, it will be a fairly straight forward exercise to compare solar systems – what’s a typical solar system; what’s an atypical solar system. However, questions central to what a typical planet and an abode for life is  will still be difficult to answer, as that population of orphan planets (and ages of same) will take a long time yet to resolve itself. 

Further Readings:

Stevenson, David J.; Life-sustaining planets in interstellar space? (in) Nature, 1 July 1999; p.32:

De La Fuente, M.C. & De La Fuente, M.R.; Runaway planets (in) New Astronomy, Volume 4, #1, February 1999; p.21-32:

The Rare Earth Hypothesis: Part Two

If the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a viable experiment and not a waste of time; if UFOs and ancient astronauts are facets that help document the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, then the very existence of an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence with technology has to be plausible in the first place. Unfortunately, it’s a long hard road to get from inorganic chemistry through to E.T. and there are many possible bottleneck hurdles that have to be overcome before the one evolves into the other. Goldilocks factors – not too this, not too that, but just right – have to be with you every step of the way. IMHO the major bottlenecks are the transition from unicellular to multicellular life and the evolutionary development and use of technology.

It’s been pointed out by others, and based on my readings I tend to have to agree, that astronomers (physical scientists) tend to be much more optimistic and supportive of the notion that advanced life forms in the Universe (extraterrestrial intelligence) are a dime-a-dozen relative to biologists (life scientists), who hedge their bets and who it must be said are presumably better qualified to pass judgments. So, taking things from a more biological perspective, what’s what?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

But now we come to our first and major bottleneck.

It took 0.5 billion years for the unicellular origin of life on Earth, or for microbes from space to take root on Earth, but then it then took nearly another 3.5 billion years between the appearance of that ‘simple’ single proto-cell life form and the eventual evolution and the resultant Cambrian explosion of multicellular (complex) life forms. For some reason(s), it appears to be biologically difficult to go from the simple single cell to a complex multicellular organism based on the only example we have to judge such things. Probably the overall obstacle to the early quick-smart establishment of multicellular (complex) life is that heretofore microbes (single cells) were 100% self-sufficient generalists. Complex organisms require the evolution of single cells to give up being generalists, become specialists, and work as part of a team. That degree of organization apparently takes lots of time, especially to the stage of where it can leave a large fossil presence, if it takes place at all.

Once you get to the multicellular stage, and in order to evolve further, well the trick is to survive, for the Universe is a dangerous place.

Planetary environments tend to be dangerous and rarely stable, and thus you need a lot of factors in place to ensure that even simple life even survives the long term and get the chance to evolve into multicellular life. Or, if you have evolved multicellular life, the odds are pretty good it’s going to get the Big “E” – Extinction.  I mean complex life is very vulnerable to environmental forces. A tornado probably isn’t going to bother bacteria, but it sure could tear you apart. That’s not to say bacteria can survive everything the cosmos can throw at them, but when nasties come, you stand a better chance of survival if you’re a microbe. So, in order to get to the first proto multicellular critter, and from that to us, you need a lot of Goldilocks factors operating in your favour.

But there are apparently just too many planetary Goldilocks factors at play to grant the probability that complex, multicellular, animal, life is common throughout the cosmos. You need to be in a quiet part of the galaxy – no nearby supernovas, black holes to suck you in, gamma ray bursters, etc. You need a long lived stable single star. You need a gravitationally stable solar system so that planets are not gravitationally disturbed out of their orbit and either plunged into the parent star or cast out of the parent system altogether. You should have a good Jupiter(s) to absorb and/or gravitational deflect comets and asteroids that would otherwise slam into your otherwise environmentally-friendly planet causing havoc to established life forms. You need a planet that’s in a pretty circular orbit, one that doesn’t stray too close or too far from the habitable zone surrounding the parent star. The planet must have a fairly stable temperature range over geologic time periods, and so you must have an atmosphere, and thus has to be massive enough to retain an atmosphere, without being so massive that you end up with a brown dwarf - a quasi-stellar body. The axis can’t have an extreme tilt, and it would greatly assist if the planet had a large moon around it to assist its long term stability. You need some sort of plate tectonics to ensure land building and the recycling of materials. If it’s intelligence, with technology you seek, the planet can’t be a water world. The planet must have formed in a region abundant in the heavier chemical elements (oxygen, sulphur, carbon, silicon, nitrogen, various metals, etc.). When you take all those factors (and more) into account, the number of suitable abodes where simple life can slowly evolve into complex life decreases rather quickly. And there’s no guarantee that there is really any directed purpose to evolution in that evolution doesn’t require simple life to become complex life. Survival and leaving offspring is what it’s all about, and if single cell critters do that what more is needed?

One note about planetary disasters or catastrophes is that these cut both ways. They can’t be frequent enough and/or large enough to wipe out the entire biosphere in total, especially the biosphere comprised of complex life forms, but on the other hand, infrequent small disasters can spur on evolutionary change by opening up environmental niches, but depending on who or what you are, when you are, and where you are, a disaster can be a double edged sword. I mean if you’re a T-Rex sixty five million years ago, its bad news. On the other hand, without the bad news for T-Rex, we wouldn’t be here, so for us, an asteroid impact 65 million years ago turned out to be good news!

It’s also difficult to naturally transport complex life around the galaxy, unlike microbial life. If a meteor hit Earth and blasted a chunk of terra firma off towards Mars, pity the poor cockroach going along for the ride. Cockroaches are tough, but not that tough. And even if a cockroach did make it alive to the surface of, say Mars, it wouldn’t survive long.

Anyway, once you have multicellular critters that have survived and thrived in a reasonably stable part of the Universe over many generations, will they evolve intelligence? I mean finding an extraterrestrial equivalent of a trilobite is all well and good, but we want to find beings more like ourselves.

IMHO, intelligence, the ability to figure things out, has evolutionary survival value and will tend to be selected for, and thus over time, there will tend to have evolved life forms with ever higher IQ’s. Here on Earth, just about all mammals and birds, and some exceptional invertebrates (the cephalopods like squid and the octopus), have reasonable IQ’s at least when compared to bacteria, plants, insects, fish, etc. Of course just as some kinds of organisms are faster than others, or have keener senses of sight or smell or hearing, not all advanced organisms are going to end up equal in the IQ stakes. But, the fact remains, the ability to think, to figure things out, can only increase your odds of survival and leaving behind more offspring.

Finally, for SETI to succeed, for UFOs to be alien spaceships, one needs our intelligent species to develop technology, and here’s where I see bottleneck number two. The evolution of technology isn’t inevitable and has a lot of just-so factors attached.

Firstly, your home planet has got to come equipped with the right sorts of materials like oxygen and metal ores and other objects than can be turned into useful tools, and of course a suitable supply of various energy sources. That’s not a given.

Water worlds are out of the running since it’s difficult to discover and utilise fire in that sort of environment.

You can’t have all your required locomotive appendages in contact with the ground – some have to be free to manipulate objects in your environment. Birds have wings that are off the ground, but since wings aren’t good at making tools, that seems to rule out wings and birds of a feather pretty much as well

So, we’ve already ruled out dolphins and whales and the cephalopods being water based creatures, and the birds with their useless wings as far as building things is concerned, and all the four-footed walking mammals.

It might be conceivable that you can build up a technology using your mouth parts and/or using a tail to manipulate and build things, but we don’t have obvious terrestrial case studies, although you might argue that bees and wasps and termites and ants and birds can build elaborate structures using just their mouths.

It’s not all that obvious that technology actually adds all that much value towards ultimate long-term survival. Lots of technological advancements do, like controlling fire, developing agriculture, the rise of modern medicine and food technologies. But then lots of modern technological wonders, the automobile, CDs, sofas, microwave ovens, and thousands of other consumer products don’t really contribute to our overall survival – certainly cars don’t when considering the road toll! Then that brings up the fact that things technological can sometimes work in the opposite direction. Toxic this, pollutant that, nuclear the next thing; then throw in a bit of global warming; the rise of urban city living with overcrowding and in general overpopulation; chemical, biological and radiological warfare/terrorism; instruments of warfare in general, like guns; the overuse of antibiotics and the rise of antibiotic resistant germs; exposure to electromagnetic fields – well, the list of horrors or potential horrors goes on and on.

It makes for an interesting question: would mankind ultimately survive longer had technology never entered the equation, or not? It’s an unanswerable question in that 1) we can’t run the contrary as a controlled experiment, and 2) that the genie is well and truly out of the bottle and there’s probably no turning back now.

So, overall, SETI might not be able to detect our technological and communicating kin out there, and UFOs might not be alien spaceships right here, because it’s 1) hard to evolve multicellular organisms, and 2) technology isn’t inevitable and might even be counterproductive. Thus, Earth, with its multicellular critters and humanity with its technology, is quite the rare planet within the Universe – according to some.   

The main proponents of what is now called the ‘Rare Earth Hypothesis’ are the scientists Brownlee and Ward (see below), and they have certainly stirred up an astrobiological hornet’s nest with the idea. That’s good for science in the long term. The belief in an unproved but accepted scientific proposition, in this case that that there are lots of complex alien critters out there, needs to be challenged if fields of inquiry aren’t going to stagnate. However, make no mistake, it is the ‘Rare Earth Hypothesis’, not the ‘Unique Earth Hypothesis’, so religious fundamentalists who have taken this hypothesis to their hearts; who still need Planet Earth, and human beings, as some sort of religious special creation, should really not take comfort from these ideas.  The Copernicus Revolution is still alive and well.

Further reading:

Brownlee, Donald & Ward, Peter D.; Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe; Copernicus Books, New York; 2000:

Burger, William C.; Perfect Planet, Clever Species: How Unique Are We? Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York; 2003:

Morris, Simon Conway; Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans In A Lonely Universe; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2003:

The Rare Earth Hypothesis: Part One

If the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a viable experiment and not a waste of time; if UFOs and ancient astronauts are facets that help document the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, then the very existence of an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence with technology has to be plausible in the first place. Unfortunately, it’s a long hard road to get from inorganic chemistry through to E.T. and there are many possible bottleneck hurdles that have to be overcome before the one evolves into the other. Goldilocks factors – not too this, not too that, but just right – have to be with you every step of the way. IMHO the major bottlenecks are the transition from unicellular to multicellular life and the evolutionary development and use of technology.

It’s been pointed out by others, and based on my readings I tend to have to agree, that astronomers (physical scientists) tend to be much more optimistic and supportive of the notion that advanced life forms in the Universe (extraterrestrial intelligence) are a dime-a-dozen relative to biologists (life scientists), who hedge their bets and who it must be said are presumably better qualified to pass judgments. So, taking things from a more biological perspective, what’s what?

For starters, our Universe is a Goldilocks Universe in that the fundamental laws, relations and principles of physics unite in such a way as to be ultimately bio-friendly. If the Universe wasn’t bio-friendly, we wouldn’t be here to comment on that. That’s not to say however, in relative contrast, that many (most) parts of the Universe aren’t overly bio-friendly. You’d be hard-pressed to survive and thrive in the depths of a stellar core, heading down a Black Hole, vacationing on the surface of a White Dwarf or in the hard vacuum of space itself.  So, overall the physics of the Universe displays the physics of a Goldilocks Universe, but actually very few addresses within an overall Goldilocks Universe are really, by our definition, Goldilocks. However, starting with bio-friendly physics, where do we go from that point? Well, physics begat inorganic chemistry. That’s step number one, and clearly that’s easy because there’s an awful lot of inorganic chemistry in our Universe.

Going from inorganic chemistry to organic chemistry isn’t difficult either. Interstellar space is full of dust and gases made up of organic chemicals; ditto many of the planets and moons within our solar system (i.e. – Titan, a moon of Saturn) have organics being part and parcel of their composition, and comets, asteroids and meteors too can contain organic compounds.

Judging by how quickly organic chemistry turned into biochemistry (the origin of life) on the early Planet Earth, it’s not difficult to generate simple proto-cellular to unicellular life forms if the conditions (adequate energy, temperatures, environments) are Goldilocks conditions.

Yet life, even microbial life, is still very, very complex (try making a microbe from scratch if you doubt it). The fact that life arose from scratch on Earth within a very, very short span of geological time after the planet formed is a bit suspect IMHO. But what if Earth were seeded by microbial life forms already in existence from space (or deliberately seeded by extraterrestrials as the Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick has proposed)? Now I realize that just puts off the origin of life question to another time(s) and place(s). However, given the vastness of the cosmos is far greater than that of our finite globe, and given that the cosmos existed for vastly longer periods of time before our sun, solar system and home planet came into existence, such additional time and space easily turns the improbable into a near certainty. And once established somewhere, then life could spread throughout that time and space, until it reached our young planet.

Earth arose billions of years after the universe and our galaxy had evolved, ample time for life to have arisen elsewhere, and seed the early Earth. This is the concept of panspermia. We know that comets, meteors, and the cosmic dust of outer space are chock-o-block full of complex organic molecules. We know that simple terrestrial life can survive the outer space environment if suitably shielded – and it doesn’t take much to do the shielding. We know that surface bits from planets/moons can be ejected into space, carry a cargo of microbes, and land on another planet, even eons later with the microbes still viable. Of course 99.999% of all such microbial life will be doomed to forever wander in space or crash onto a cold, surface of a planet with no atmosphere or water, or plunge into a star, etc. But, sheer numbers will insure that now and again some microbes will land on a hospitable abode and be fruitful and multiple and evolve. The interesting bit is that if then, then now. And thus panspermia will be happening today. Certainly some meteorites which have impacted Earth have inside them ‘organized elements’ suggestive of microbial structures – the Murchison Meteorite from Australia is one such stone. The problem is terrestrial contamination as there are often lengthy time periods between their fall and subsequent discovery. As an aside, if Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe are correct (and I believe they are), microbes (bacteria and viruses) impacting Earth today are largely responsible for some select or various disease epidemics and pandemics, past present, and no doubt future.

On Earth, microbes rule, OK? The biomass of all the bacteria, etc. put together easily equals the biomass of every other multicellular plant and animal added together. And microbes can live in environments where multicellular critters fear to tread and often can’t: from the coldest terrestrial environments, up to the near boiling temperatures, from deep underground to the heights of the atmosphere, from inside water-cooled nuclear reactors and the interior of rocks, to intensely saline, acidic and alkaline environments, to ecosystems where the sun never shines, like the abyssal depths.

They can even survive outer space. Bacteria survived on the surface of the Moon – on Surveyor Three. This was possibly the most significant discovery of the entire Apollo Moon program and it hardly even rated a mention. Astronauts from the Apollo 12 mission brought back to Earth parts of the unmanned Surveyor Three Lunar Lander. Terrestrial bacteria on those parts survived the lunar vacuum, solar radiations (UV, etc.), the massive temperature extremes, and lack of water and nutrients. Experiments since then in low earth orbit have confirmed that given just minimal shielding, bacteria can boldly go!

You’d be aware of how difficult it is to totally sterilize something, be it hospital equipment or a spacecraft bound for a Martian landing. They’re tough – have you ever read about a mass extinction event where a bacterial species, unlike say the multicellular dinosaurs, went poof? Microbes are easy to transport. They can be blasted off the surface of the Earth, shielded from radiation by the debris, and survive to land on another world and be fruitful and multiply. There’s little doubt that somewhere way out there, terrestrial bacteria have hitched a ride to the stars, bolding going where lots of microbes have gone before! Translated, I firmly expect that the universe is teaming with life in all sorts of places. The less than glamorous catch is that LGM is not going to stand for Little Green Men, but Little Green Microbes.

To be continued...