Life's Launch

I have been taking an online course on the subject of the origin of life on Earth. This is a field of study that seems to be getting tantalizingly close to an answer. The field got a major boost back in the 1950s when two researchers conducted an experiment that showed when a mixture of certain gases (thought at the time to be similar to Earth's early atmosphere) were heated with water and a spark passed through the vapors, complex organic molecules were formed. It seems as if the pre-life chemicals have a predilection to combine into complicated configurations—all on their own, in the form of many different complex amino acids.

But the process of these complex molecules then taking the next steps into something animate, is another huge leap. Lots of research is going on and it is tantalizingly close to an answer, but the difficulties of the process are immense.

We do know that life arose very early in Earth's history. Our planet was formed some 4.5 billion years ago, and life appeared quite shortly thereafter—under conditions that most types of life today would be unable to tolerate. Life is tough, though. Given half a chance, it will thrive, and it did. Then it took a very long time (some 3.5 billion years) for life to grow past single-cell creatures. Only about 500 million years ago did multicellular animals appear on the scene, during what is termed the Cambrian Explosion.

What struggles did life encounter in its early days to stay alive? Current research suggests that life may have originated in various clement locations on our planet. I use the word “clement” in a relative sense here... all conditions on Earth were very harsh in those days. 

Life may in fact have gotten started more than once and then earlier forms died out, before sustaining itself; in a sort of stuttering manner. It's also possible that different forms of life came into existence and that the kind of life we know today may have driven other forms extinct.

Then again, life may not have originated on Earth. Meteorites continue to fall on our planet from space, which contain complex organic molecules. Maybe life got seeded here from elsewhere in the solar system or the cosmos. The environment on Mars some 3-4 billion years ago was warm and wet. Maybe life arose there and traveled on a rocky space ship to Earth. We have fund several meteorites on the Antarctic snow that we know did come from Mars (due to their unique Martian composition), and some of their interiors appear to have had primitive life forms embedded in them.

As I wrote above, the more scientists learn about the origin of life, the more complex that beginning seems to have been. It may not be long before we've deciphered the story, however.

No Phone Home—Part 1

One of humankind's enduring questions is whether or not Earth is alone in the universe in harboring life. Are we the only—and therefore exceedingly special—example of animation in the vast cosmos, or might there be others out there? This very question has evolved as our understanding of the universe has grown. The ancients may have wondered about life existing on the other shore of the sea, and people a couple of hundred years ago speculated on beings living on the Moon and Mars.

Today, however, we know much more about the vastness of the universe (even though we may not be able to wrap our heads around how truly vast it is), so now our imaginations extend way beyond our solar system, even our own galaxy, to the billions of galaxies out there. Yet the same question still poses itself, but the potential territory has gotten immensely greater, and thus the possible answers far more manifold.

We also now know much more about how life may have arisen on Earth and the extreme forms that it can assume here. We know that the presence of humans, along with all the other planet's creatures is the result of a long and torturous path that could have taken countless other directions. Some of those other alternatives could easily have resulted in the final termination of life on Earth (it could have come to a dead end and may still), or brought about life forms quite alien to what we know today.

So back to that perennial question: Is there life out there? What chance is there that it bears any resemblance to Earth's critters? Would we even recognize it as life, if we were to encounter it? More to the point, are the distances so vast that we'd ever encounter it? Movies like “ET” offer us fascinating and bizarre creatures who come to visit, and then “phone home,” to return to their world. But any kind of life out there may be simply too far away for us ever to come in contact with, or simply be unable to phone home, because of the tremendous distances.

And the distances are what matters. Humanity has for a few decades been engaged in space communication efforts, in which various researchers have scanned deep space, looking for electromagnetic (EM) signals that distant civilizations may have broadcast to the universe—signals that announce their existence. These projects are labeled Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The premise is that distant technological civilizations (if they exist) would likely emit EM transmissions, in an attempt to notify other civilizations of their presence. 
 
But is this assumption justified? The SETI project surmises that distant technological species would choose to send out some kind of “I am here” signal, but is this true? Stephen Hawking wrote that this can be a risky process for Earthlings, if we engage in this game, because some life forms that may be far superior to us could thereby discover we are here and subsequently launch space ships to come and dominate Earth.

Another point to consider is that our SETI projects have evolved dramatically, in the last few decades. As our technology has advanced, we come up with progressively better methods of searching. But the civilizations we hope to contact may be centuries or millennia ahead or behind us. They may have developed communication schemes that we either once rejected or have yet to discover. We may be way out of temporal sync with these creatures and miss connecting, simply because our technologies do not match. It could be analogous to Europeans in the 19^th century looking for radio wave emissions from Tierra del Fuego, when the inhabitants there preferred smoke signals.

More on extraterrestrial life next time...

Life Emerges

I have written several blogs on the origin or emergence of life—here on Earth or anywhere. With every passing day science gets closer to having some answers about how life began. We are deriving better and better hypotheses about life's origins. Where just a few decades ago science had little idea of how it could have happened, we now seem to be closing in on an explanation.

We are beginning to understand that the universe is filled with all kinds of organic molecules, and we're also discovering that these molecules seem to have a predilection for coming together and growing evermore complex, and even to reproduce. Reproduction is a basic quality of life. It almost seems as if the emergence of life is inevitable, given favorable conditions.

Although we may soon reach the point where we can say with confidence that, given the right conditions, life will arise, we may never be able to describe quite how. It may be that the beginning of life is what's termed an “emergent process”—something that cannot be predicted from initial conditions. As an example, each ant in a colony is an extremely simple critter—responding to only the most primitive stimuli; but put thousands of ants together and you have a superorganism that performs sophisticated tasks. As another example, a starling is no match for a hawk, if caught flying alone. But put thousands of starlings together in what's called a “murmuring,” and you observe the group shifting its shape instantaneously, to confuse an attacking hawk. These are examples of emergent processes in nature.

All we know at present is that life emerged on Earth, not long after the planet was formed. We are hard at work to figure out how. But are we an example of life that arose many places, or are we alone in the universe? The answer to that question seemed remote until recently. We now know that conditions for life seem to be present on Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. Before long we will send spacecraft to these moons that will measure for and possibly detect life. We may soon have similar answers for Mars. Was there once life on Mars? Is it still there now—maybe not running around on the surface, but in the form of microbes underground?

Step by step, science closes in on answers to these questions. Just as we once did not know that microorganisms inhabit our bodies and sometimes lead to diseases—until we built microscopes and medical theories to prove it—someday in the future we may look back with the solid knowledge of how life began, and even that it began elsewhere too. While a mystery to us, it may be seen as obvious to our distant heirs.

Anybody Out There?—Part 2

Getting back to intelligent life out there, civilizations on other worlds could be billions of years older than ours, or have yet to develop. If humans have come so incredibly far in a few thousand years, what may have happened on planets where life originated several billion years earlier? If life evolved there anywhere like it did here, we can't begin to imagine how advanced they've become.

And those questions (or speculations, because we yet do not have any evidence that intelligent life has arisen elsewhere) lead yet to another fascinating and significant question: If intelligent life is far ahead of us someplace out there, why have we not yet had it knocking on our earthly door? Where is it? Humans have played with the concept of space travel for at least a couple of hundred years. We've even begun taking baby steps to the Moon and Mars. “Star Trek” and other science fiction tales describe interstellar and intergalactic space travel, but is such travel really possible?

Distances across vasts spans of space are difficult to wrap our heads around. Even at the speed of light—which we may never approach—the length of time required to negotiate these distances is daunting. “Star Trek” engineers could shift the Enterprise into “warp” speeds: faster than light, but those speeds may forever remain fiction.

That said, how about considering an intelligent species on the other side of the galaxy that is a mere million years ahead of us? Couldn't they have reached cosmic speeds and brought transit times down to within maybe hundreds of thousands of years? Or where might we be in space a million years from now? Such transit times are incredibly long, but not beyond the reach of a civilization that may have been around for a few million years.

So where are these intelligent, advanced space travelers? Why haven't we heard by now, if they're so much more developed than we are? Couldn't a super-advanced civilization have spanned the universe by now—or at least the galaxy? Once again there may be no answer to these questions... they may even be the wrong ones to be asking. I'm sure that in another decade or so (a cosmic instant) we'll come up with a better set of questions. Until then, these are the ones we ask.

Some people suggest that the absence of any contact can be explained by the fact that there are no intelligent civilizations out there. Maybe so, but that is no reason to stop looking. What's more, humans were once inclined to believe that we were special, that Earth was the only source of life in the universe. As more and more planets and life possibilities are found, our specialness may not be true.

One rather disturbing answer brought up by some researchers as to why we're still unaware of other intelligent civilizations (if they're out there) is that there might be a limit as to how long a technological civilization can endure. The dinosaurs lasted something like 150 million years. We humans have been around only a couple of hundred thousand years. We have a long way to go, before we demonstrate our longevity. There are many informed prognosticators who raise the possibility that we may not last that much longer. Our technology races forward, with little thought to its dangers, virtually out of control. We tend to do things that we later regret—such as create an atomic bomb or pesticides that are subsequently shown to cause human birth defects and diseases. So far, most of the dumb things we have done have been small and on a local scale, but we are now playing with fire on a planetary scale, via global warming, habitat degradation, nuclear arms, etc. If we keep up our pace, we could render Homo sapiens extinct.

Our extinction is a real possibility. If so, it would terminate Earth's current experiment of evolving “intelligent” life. Of course, not all life forms on our planet would be eradicated—many of them are far tougher and resilient than we are. (Think of ants.) The evolutionary clock for the development of intelligent life on planet Earth would simply be reset. There's at east another billion years or two for the experiment to be rerun, before our sun expands and cooks all life on the planet.

So many questions. So many possibilities. Most are beyond the imagination of our minds. It's an exciting—as well as a sobering—time in our evolution. We are yet infants in the cosmos. We have time to correct our dangerous ways and see where evolution may take us in the far future. It'd be nice if we do, and are able to join other forms of intelligent life in universal kinship.

Addendum

Here's a neat way to get a feeling for the extraordinary length of time the Earth has been around and how short a time we've been here. (The following simile comes from an online course I'm currently taking: “Astronomy: Exploring Time and Space,” from Arizona Sate University, offered by Professor Chris Impey.)

Let a 1,000 page book represent the age of the Earth; thus each page of this massive tome represents 45 million years. Here are a few fascinating facts about this hypothetical book:

• For the first 10-20 pages of the book, no life is present on Earth. It's a barren planet.
• Fish first appear on page 500; half way through the book.
• The dinosaurs become extinct on page 985. (Only 15 more pages to reach to today!)
• Our ape-like ancestors appear halfway down page 1,000.
• Modern humans enter the scene on the book's very last line.
• Everything we humans pride ourselves on, everything from 40,000 year old cave paintings to the recent discovery of the Higgs boson, is contained within that last word on page 1,000.

All of modern humanity's accomplishments are enclosed within the very last word of a 1,000 page book! We humans may consider ourselves the “last word,” but we sure are the Johnny-come-latelies on the planet! I hope that our story does not end there. I hope that we find a way to put out a new edition some day that far exceeds 1,000 pages.

Anybody Out There?—Part 1

One of the most intriguing questions that has increasingly become the subject of scientific investigations, as well as popular media speculation, is the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Are we alone in the universe? I have played with this question in several past postings of this blog. I recently read an article on the subject that raised another fascinating aspect to the question. Here's the essence of it.

Science has edged relentlessly closer to the hypothesis that, indeed, there may well be life out there, for several reasons. (1) We now know that there are billions of planets just in our galaxy alone—something for which we had no evidence just a few years ago. (2) Researchers are getting better at understanding the conditions under which life may have spontaneously originated; if so, it could have done so in many locations throughout the universe. (3) Our space probes have discovered complex organic molecules on other bodies in space, such as comets; which were present at the beginning of our solar system, 4.5 billion years ago. There is a strong possibility that these molecules may be able to initiate life, when conditions allow. (4) Science has widened the conditions under which life can survive, if not thrive—conditions we only recently thought would be too hostile, until we discovered life thriving there, right here on Earth. (5) We also now know that some forms of life can survive the incredibly harsh environment of space, which potentially makes it possible for life to travel (as hardy microorganisms) from one planet to another.

Clearly extraterrestrial life has not yet been found, but we seem to be much closer to discovering it, if it's out there. Recent findings by the Mars rovers have directed our attention to that planet—giving us greater expectation that life may be found there. Scientists are excited by the prospect of this age-old question soon being answered. Thus many of them are turning their attention to what we may discover, if we do find life out there. We'd best prepare so that we are not taken by unpleasant surprises.

Suppose we do come across life elsewhere. It may come in a form that is utterly different from what we expect. Will we even recognize it as life? And the big question: Will it be intelligent—whatever that means? If so, will its intelligence resemble our own? We tend to regard our high-tech smart phones as evidence of our acumen. The guy who invented velcro was very smart; so was the team that discovered the Higgs boson last year. Ants are dumb, by human standards, but they've been around for over 100 million years. Is that not an example of a kind of intelligence? So if there is intelligent life elsewhere, its type of intelligence may be completely unexpected by us. We'd best keep our minds open.

There's another fascinating aspect about discovering intelligent life out there: technologically speaking it may be millions (or even billions) of years ahead of us, or just getting started. Earth is some 4.5 billion years old and life appears to have begun on our planet less than a billion years after it formed. So life has been here for maybe as long as four billion years. Think about that: it took some four billion years for humans to attain the advanced technological state we now find ourselves in. And our highly developed civilization is only a few hundred years old. Where might we be in another 100 years? Or 1,000 years? We can't begin to guess. Any of our predictions in the past have been far wide of the mark. And science fiction is of little help; their scenarios are usually quite naive.

More on life out there, next time...

Stalwart Life

Over the last few decades scientists have discovered life thriving in environments that were once considered to be too hostile and barren. For example, dozens of miles under the sea surface, where it's inky black and noxious fumes vent from smoky fumeroles, organisms thrive in water as hot as 200^oF. Deep in underground mines (some 2 ½ miles down), far from the sun and its life-giving rays, microorganisms feed on minerals and soak up heat from radioactivity, in lieu of any photosynthetic processes. In extremely acidic water, near its boiling point (such as in Yellowstone National Park), other organisms prosper. Only a few decades ago scientists would have been convinced that life (as they then knew it) could not survive in such harsh environments.

These discoveries of life's robustness have forced biologists to revise the conditions under which they believe life could survive. The very definitions of what constitutes life and what life requires to take root and thrive have been dramatically amended.

A recent example of another unlikely site for life has been the discovery of robust creatures deep under the Antarctic ice shelves, far from sunlight, in a location that was expected to be dark, cold, and lifeless. After having drilled a half-mile deep hole through the ice shelf, 500 miles inland from the open ocean and that far from any sunlight, researchers found microbes and small fish—in a completely dark location. How did these critters get there? How do they survive? I won't go into the details here, but the scientists were dumbfounded, when they lowered an underwater robot and photographed creatures. It blew their minds.

These recent discoveries have caused scientists to revise their theories about what life requires to survive, as well as to recognize the new kinds of life they've found in these hostile environments. The requirements for life on Earth have been significantly broadened. Maybe life doesn't require water—once thought to be absolutely necessary. Maybe it doesn't require photosynthesis of the sun's energy—which most every life form must have. Maybe it can use the energy and heat emitted by radioactive decay deep underground. Indeed, these are all true.

We are thus expanding our understanding of the extremes under which life can survive. We are getting past our myopic view that life must be very much like us, in order to exist. Microbes have been proven to be incredibly robust. Some have even been attached to the exterior of the International Space Station, where they have been exposed to high radiation, extreme temperature changes, and a total lack of atmosphere for over a year... and they survived!

What fascinates me is the implications that these discoveries have had on our guesses about the existence of extraterrestrial life. Earth offers very cordial conditions for life, compared to the harsh environments found elsewhere. Life thrives on our planet, in countless forms and in many pleasant ecosystems. Until these recent discoveries of life existing in harsh locations, scientists were inclined to discount the possibility of life other than on Earth. Many people thought that our little planet could be the only place in the universe where life arose. This is turning out to be a narrow-minded viewpoint.

Now we are thinking differently. In fact, right here in our solar system life may have gained a toehold in places other than Earth. Mars is looking more and more likely that it may have had life, a few billion years ago. Europa—an ice-covered moon of Jupiter—is thought to harbor an internal ocean of water; in conditions not that much different from Antarctica. Researchers are making plans to visit Europa and run experiments to see if life may be found there. Other moons in our solar system may have conditions where life may be able to survive. Farther out in space, thousands of planets have been discovered orbiting their stars. Preliminary findings suggest that some of them may be conducive to life. Life almost seems simply to be waiting for us to find it.

The existence of extraterrestrial life has, until the last couple of decades, either seemed doubtful or was confined to the realm of science fiction. Humanity is beginning to realize that life just may be abundant in our universe. Stay tuned... the answer may come in another decade or two.

Origin of Life

I have recently read the book Seven Clues to the Origin of Life by the British author A.G. Cairns-Smith. It is written in the manner of a forensic analysis, as is classically described by Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels of Sherlock Holmes, as Holmes delves into the evidence in the wake of a crime. The book takes this “Holmesian” approach in considering how life might have arisen on Earth. That is, rather than suggest a hypothesis and then explore it to see if it makes sense, Cairns-Smith ponders all the clues and arrives at a conclusion, after ruling out the competing possibilities.

I have read several other books by scientific authors on the origin of life on Earth, and find there is a wide variety of opinions on the subject. There remains considerable disagreement among scholars, since the cause of the origin of life on this planet as yet remains beyond science. Research is closing in on an answer very slowly, and may soon have an answer, but it’s presently an unknown. For now, we are left with guesses.

Western culture is very influenced by the version of life’s beginning that is presented by the Bible—a version that is, of course, mythical and therefore literally incorrect. The book of Genesis’ story is a metaphor, presented in poetry. It’s not science; it’s not intended to be science—it’s a folktale. The real beginning of life was quite beyond the ken of the ancient biblical writers; as is true for other ancient cultures, which also had their own genesis myths.

Life’s origins on Earth could have come about in two significantly different ways: (1) it somehow originated right here on this planet or (2) it originated elsewhere in the universe and then arrived here—both possibilities having occurred about 3 ½ billion years ago. These are two strikingly different scenarios. They offer a very contrasting view of the universe. Is life extraterrestrial or not? In case #2 it obviously is. In case #1 we may be alone in the universe. Again, the answer eludes us as yet.

Human religions are by definition people-centered; they cannot consider extraterrestrial conditions, such as in case #2. Cairns-Smith’s sorting through the clues can fit either case above. In the end, he offers the possibility that whether life began on Earth or elsewhere, it could have started with a seed that would not have been life as we know it, but some sort of nascent, self-organizing precursor. It then required just the right conditions to transform itself into life. In other words, life did not spring suddenly into existence, essentially from out of nowhere, but had a nonorganic beginning, which very gradually evolved into life as we know it today. It’s a neat kind of Holmesian mystery, solved in a unique way! Is it true? Maybe we'll know before long.

Odd Life

I have written a few times in this blog about the origins of life on Earth, as well as the search for life elsewhere in the universe. (“Unlikely Alone,” 2/28/13, “Goldilocks Globe,”1/30/11, “Extra Terrestrial Life,” 1/22/10, and “Life Out There,” 11/20/08.) When scientists talk about looking for extraterrestrial life, they often qualify their efforts as seeking for “life as we know it.” They are cautious enough to recognize that alien life-forms may not resemble ours—especially since more and more examples of extreme forms of life have been discovered right here on our little planet. Just a few decades ago science did not expect to find examples of the so-called extremophiles that we now know flourish in hot, acidic, deep oceanic, and underground locations.

A new arm of research is currently examining the possibility of life-forms here on Earth that even further stretch our current concepts of what life is. Life, “as we know it,” (so far) is carbon based, water immersed, and uses proteins made up of 20 kinds of amino acids and DNA that uses four kinds of chemical bases. We know, however, that nature contains about 100 types of amino acids and a dozen or more kinds of bases. Why does our type of life employ only a small fraction of the available chemical compounds? Could it use more? Could other forms of life use other compounds? And is carbon the only basis of life—why not silicon? Could liquids other than water be the basis of life?

These questions are increasingly being asked and explored by some scientists. They feel that it is possible that there may be other types of life living right alongside us, but we have heretofore ignored them, because our expectations of what life is have been too narrow. These scientists' explorations are being broadened to seek life forms that may be odd (to us).

This issue of alternative kinds of life is even more relevant, as we go looking for life elsewhere in the universe. In the 1970s, two NASA Viking missions to Mars were explicitly designed to test for Martian life—past or present. The Viking landers took samples, ran tests, and at first seemed to indicate they'd found life. A closer look forced NASA to declare the tests negative, however. No Mars life in those samples...or so they thought.

At the present moment the rover Curiosity is rummaging around in Mars's Gale Crater, checking to see if conditions there could once have supported life. NASA is careful to caution that this time they are not looking for life, just signs that conditions could once have been amenable for it. They've learned the lesson of getting too specific in the hunt for life.

But the newest scientific studies suggest that we may still have biochemical blinders on, when it comes to looking for life elsewhere. If there are unrecognized life forms sharing Earth with us, what even more odd forms might exist somewhere “out there?” Perhaps we should open up our minds even more.

When life first emerged on Earth—some 3.5 billion years ago—it may well have consisted of more than one chemical basis. As time passed, our type—carbon and water based—may have come to dominate. Evolution may have favored our kind of life and either eliminated the others as unfit, or relegated them to the margins, where we simply haven't noticed them. During the 150-million-year reign of the dinosaurs, mammals existed only as small critters who kept under cover and avoided the big reptiles. If you were to ask a dinosaur about mammals, he'd probably have shrugged (I believe they did have shoulders), having no clue that mammals even existed.

It's amazing what we open ourselves to when we let go of our selfish, narrow-minded viewpoints—whether the object of our attention is life forms, religion, food, or musical tastes. We have so much to learn. One of the biggest barriers to wisdom is our inability to step outside ourselves.

Fine Tuned Just for Me?—Conclusion

There is another group of people who feel they have the answer for why the universe is as it is; why all those physical parameters have precisely the value they must have, if life was to have come about. These folks have put forth an explanation called the “anthropic cosmological principle.” There are several versions of this principle, but they all state that the laws of nature must allow for the creation of beings who are then capable of studying the laws of nature. This point of view has never settled well with me, as it seems to contain circular thinking: “I am, therefore the world must have been fashioned in a way that I could be.” I don’t believe that explanation really solves anything.

Different factions have stated the anthropic principle in various ways. One argument is the notion that there are an infinite number of universes, that the cosmos we know is, in fact, just one part of the so-called “Multiverse.” The countless other universes may indeed possess alternate versions of physical laws; thus only some of them have developed anything like the cosmic structures of our universe, and none of them likely resulted in life (at least as we know it). The result is that those other universes might exist but would be unknowable to us, or us to them. There is something inherently unsatisfactory to me in this explanation, since it’s beyond our ability to test this hypothesis. It is another fantastical explanation. There is no way to prove or disprove it.

Furthermore, I believe that the anthropic principle is too close to being a mythical explanation clothed in scientific terms. The word anthropic is defined by the dictionary as “having to do with mankind or with the period of man’s existence on Earth.” And it is uncomfortably close to being anthropocentric, which the dictionary defines as “considering man to be the central or most significant fact of the universe.” Is the anthropic principle really that much better than the fable given in Genesis—that places humans at the center of the universe? I don’t think so.

So I don’t feel satisfied with either the church’s explanation or the anthropic cosmological principle. As another way of looking at the issue, let me go from all of life to just one individual: myself. How did I come to be? Why am I alive?

I know that I am the result of a long line of ancestors. I came into existence after the occurrence of an uncountable string of incidents and decisions made by those forebears. My very existence depends upon history having unfolded exactly as it did. If any one of my ancestors (all the way back to the first single-celled creature?) had done anything different—in any way—I may not be here. If any one of them had mated with a partner other than the precise one they chose, I’d not be here. If any one of them had perished before they mated, I would not exist. If any one of them had eaten something nasty and gotten too ill to procreate exactly when they did, I wouldn’t have been born. My existence is the result of an essentially endless string of coincidental events. It all led to me. Wow! Therefore, it all must have all been designed just for me!

But wait. Did God (or any other power) design all this, just for me to be here? Did God guide all those ancestors to do precisely what they did, just so I’d be born? Isn’t it the epitome of hubris to suppose that it all happened just for my sake? What humongous self-centeredness to think that I’m the culmination—the be-all and end-all—of this long, complex process!

OK, maybe that line of thinking is stretching it a bit. Alternatively, I could posit the Personal Anthropic Principle to explain my existence: the long string of ancestors must have been set up for me, because here I am! Or better yet, the principle of multi-me’s: there are an infinite number of other me’s out there, in parallel existences, who cannot see each other, each one born out of a slightly different sequence of events. OK, maybe I’ve gotten carried away again.

It seems to me that what causes people to invent ideas and beliefs like a God-designed, fine-tuned universe or an anthropic-principle explanation, is that they cannot live with the mystery. There appears to be a deep human drive to have answers, and even to want the answers to be definitive—something that one can count on, forever.

We don’t want simply to understand things—in fact, for many people, understanding is not nearly as important as simply knowing. We want to be knowledgeable about things, to be certain. We want to “put the question to bed.” Living with uncertainty is very uncomfortable, if not terrifying for many people. Our culture admires those who know—whether that knowledge comes from reason, from myth, or from a powerful institution that forces its beliefs on people. We tend to regard knowledge as something we collect and own. Understanding is not really our intent, it’s the possession of knowledge—he who possesses the most is the best.

I draw much comfort from being able to admit that I don’t know; that no matter how much I strive to understand, it’s only a partial comprehension, and tomorrow’s understanding may bring a wholly new (and more valid) viewpoint. I can live with the mystery and give truth the time to reveal itself. I can look at this universe and be filled with wonder and amazement about why it is as it is. In fact, the harder I work to understand it, the more I see that I don’t know—and never will (nor will any human). The qualities of the universe may be due to this possibility, or that possibility, or maybe a new possibility that will surface tomorrow.

I don’t need to posit a reason for why things are the way they are—especially if it’s beyond my ability to come up with an answer today. If I delude myself into believing in a particular answer—when there is no basis to do so—I lock myself into a particular mindset that excludes other possibilities that may be closer to the truth. If I do so, one of them may later show itself to be closer to the truth than my belief and I’ll find myself fighting to hold on to the false story I’ve latched onto—much like the church did, when Galileo spoke up to say the Earth was not the center of the universe. Meanwhile, I’ll let the mystery be.

Fine Tuned Just for Me?—Part 1

Anyone who takes a close look at our universe and examines its physical laws and properties, will be struck by the long string of “coincidences” that had to occur in order for life to appear on this planet Earth. If any of nature’s physical parameters or quantities were even the slightest bit different, life could never have begun.

There is no fundamental reason why the properties of our universe are exactly as they are. Any one of them could be the tiniest bit different. For example, there is no reason we know of that the four basic forces of nature—the weak and strong nuclear forces inside each atom, the electromagnetic force controlling interactions between atoms, and the gravity that defines the attraction between large bodies—have either the absolute qualities or the relative values that they do. If the comparative strengths of these four forces were even slightly different, it would have resulted in a universe unimaginably unlike the one we inhabit—indeed, if it could have even existed at all.

Here are just a few possible consequences: Atoms may never have formed. Hydrogen—the vital element in everything—may never have lasted more than a nanosecond, after it was formed. Any elements heavier than the most basic (including life-essential carbon) may never have had a chance to form. We’ve needed these elements to hang around for billions of years, stable and enduring, for them to become components in the slow, difficult evolution of life.

As another example, our universe possesses a delicate balance between visible matter, dark matter, and dark energy. The three of them must be in precisely the equilibrium they are, or things would be very different. If the balance had tipped slightly another way, the universe would have lasted only a few million years before it collapsed back on itself—far too short a time for life to have evolved. Tipped slightly the opposite direction and the universe would have expanded so rapidly that galaxies, stars, and planets never would have had a chance to form. That universe would simply have been a dilute soup of elementary particles.

Here’s another mystery: water is a very peculiar molecule—with hydrogen and oxygen atoms aligning themselves in such a fashion that ice (the solid form of water) floats on liquid water. For virtually every other element or molecule, the solid form is more dense and sinks. If it weren’t for the unique shape and nature of the water molecule, lakes and oceans would freeze solid from the bottom up in cold weather, rather than “freeze over” and allow life to flourish beneath the surface ice. No one knows why water behaves this way, but if it didn’t, life could never have survived on Earth.

As a final illustration, there are numerous basic constants of nature—for example, the speed of light, the mass of elementary particles, and the electrical charge of elementary particles. If any one of these constants was the slightest degree different, our universe could not be as it is. Either life could never have evolved or the universe itself may never have been able even to get started, following its big bang.

Thus, as we look at our universe, we can see that it is extremely fine-tuned, to allow the necessary evolution of galaxies, stars, planets, and ultimately leading to life on this planet. Change any one parameter by the tiniest amount and we wouldn’t be here. It’s as if all the physical laws have been precisely set to allow, or even compel, humans to exist (at least on this Earth).

What does this mean? If we know of no reason why some of the properties couldn’t have been slightly different—and we don’t—why did the universe get set up this way? What made it so life friendly?

Some people will say that God set all the parameters, on our behalf. He knew exactly what they needed to be, in order to create humans (which, by the way, he had also decided must be in his image). This line of thought, however, not only relies on a supernatural explanation, but places humans at the center of the universe created by a meddling deity. It’s the same kind of thinking that had the Church teaching that Earth was at the center of the universe and that God set all the other heavenly bodies rotating about our planet, just for our pleasure. In this church-supported viewpoint, we humans are the epitome of creation—the end-all and be-all. God did it all for us, planning every tiny detail so that we’d become the final product of the cosmos. I don’t think so. The cosmos is continuing to evolve and the future is still very much up in the air—including our longevity.

Anyone who is not influenced by mythical and simplistic beliefs, however, knows there must be more to the story than that God made it so. We know that Earth is not the center of the universe. We live on a pretty typical rocky world, circling a pretty typical star, on the outer regions of a pretty typical galaxy. We know that there are many billions of such galaxies in the cosmos. To believe that we are any different from or in any way superior to another planet (or living organisms) in this vast universe is nothing more than self-centered, presumptuous, and insular thinking. It is the same kind of thinking that leads to religious pogroms and racial hatred.

No, today we understand enough of the real workings of the cosmos to discard these dangerous beliefs. We know that the firmament is not a rotating sphere of points of light around the Earth. We know that we fly through space in a complex dance, swinging around by the sun, nearby stars, the galaxy, and a collection of several nearby galaxies. There is nothing that obviously places us above any other rocky orb in the cosmos. We as yet have no confirmation of life anywhere else in this vast universe, but all signs tell us it’s likely we’re not alone—and certainly not superlative.

So what is the meaning of all this fine-tuning? More next time…