Wednesday, December 21, 2005
One in N
"N" is an interesting number. It's the number that we use at work all the time. "N" represents whatever number isn't known. I'm currently at home watching a documentary which is seemingly about Cosmology, a hobby of viewing interest to me. I sometimes struggle with what I know about science and what I know about God. Cosmology is just a hobby though.
The documentary is currently describing Drake's Equation. At least that's what Carl Sagan and James Burke call it. I think Stephen Hawkings calls it that too. It has to do with the vastness of space and the special conditions needed in order to be a conscience, thinking entity reading this blog.
The documentary asserts something which I found interesting and really puts some additional requirements on ol' Drake. These additional requirements for life certainly make sense to human life, but I'm not sure if they're absolutely required. They list the need for a planet which is no more than 5% closer and no more than 20% further from a star similar to our own white dwarf so liquid water would be available. They also require a planet about the size and shape of our Earth (which I capitalize, but nobody else seems to) in order to have a thin enough crust to have plate techtonics, but just large enough and with an iron core. They go on to dictate that the planet needs an iron core because it has to have magnetic poles in order to deflect the radiation of the primary star ( see: Aurora Borealis ). Lastly (well not lastly really), it needs a nearly perfect orbit. No highly eliptical or comet-like orbits, so that pretty much eliminates the planets we've found so far.
With all that in place and working perfectly for a few billion years, you still only have a place that life *could* possibly exist. You also need the following. One, you need some seed of life which (for us anyway) would be in the form of a simple protein or amino acid that somehow starts reproducing itself. I don't know about you, but when I put a few hundred carbon atoms together, it doesn't spring to life and start making copies of itself. Maybe after a few billion years it could - I dunno.
Second, you need that reproducing organism to mutate perfectly, while at the same time branching off if you wish to have life in the abundant variety that we have. Darwin, right? I heard an interesting lesson a while ago. Basically, it stated that you (You! the reader of this blog) are a survivor. You represent a long chain on surviving ancestors. Everyone in your ancestory was successfully born, lived through childhood, met someone, mated, had a baby and raised that baby to full maturity in order to give birth to the next line in your lineage. When you think about it, it's a very thin chain of successes that leads to you. None of the people in your lineage died at birth, none died in wagon accidents before reaching maturity. None of them them died virgins. All of them successfully had sex which lead to pregnancy, which lead to a successful birth. And on and on - it's amazing really.
Anywho, where was I? Oh yeah, evolution would need to successfully reproduce and mutate in just the right way so these simple proteins would eventually turn into lizards. Or fish. Or birds. Or whales. And you need to do all of this in 10 or 12 billion years.
Furthermore, one (or many) of these surviving species needs to develop a way to think with their meat. When you consider it in terms of what an alien from another star would see, that's what we do. We think with meat! We think with meat, and we communicate by pushing oxygen and nitrogen through hollow pockets of meat. We record history and try to understand the Universe around us by writing with pens held by meat. Wierd really.
Now, you have to think in terms of a civilization. Because life is easier when you develop civilization. These ugly bags of water and meat have to use their meat-brains to figure out how to live together without just eating each other. Then, we have to figure out technology - how do we communicate with others on other planets, in other solar systems? And how do we develop technology for science without also producing technology for blowing ourselves up?
If the inhabitants of a planet succeeds in all of these (and probably more), you're in the running for becoming aware of your surroundings. You would then have the potential to see the Universe around you. And you have 12 billion years to do it.
Did I say 12 billion? Well maybe, but you would'd have to start with a bunch of hydrogen and start from there. That's the sum of your raw materials. A whole bunch of the simplest atoms possible. One proton, one electron and that's it.
I'm not going to sit here and say that it's impossible. I just want you to consider the notion that we not just the sum result of hydrogen and 12 billion years of randomness. Human life is extraordinarily rare. We're not just one in "N", we're one in N to the Nth. And you (the person reading this right now) are one in N to the Nth to the 6 billionth in terms of people who are alive right now. Now, aren't you pretty rare? I think you are.
The documentary is currently describing Drake's Equation. At least that's what Carl Sagan and James Burke call it. I think Stephen Hawkings calls it that too. It has to do with the vastness of space and the special conditions needed in order to be a conscience, thinking entity reading this blog.
The documentary asserts something which I found interesting and really puts some additional requirements on ol' Drake. These additional requirements for life certainly make sense to human life, but I'm not sure if they're absolutely required. They list the need for a planet which is no more than 5% closer and no more than 20% further from a star similar to our own white dwarf so liquid water would be available. They also require a planet about the size and shape of our Earth (which I capitalize, but nobody else seems to) in order to have a thin enough crust to have plate techtonics, but just large enough and with an iron core. They go on to dictate that the planet needs an iron core because it has to have magnetic poles in order to deflect the radiation of the primary star ( see: Aurora Borealis ). Lastly (well not lastly really), it needs a nearly perfect orbit. No highly eliptical or comet-like orbits, so that pretty much eliminates the planets we've found so far.
With all that in place and working perfectly for a few billion years, you still only have a place that life *could* possibly exist. You also need the following. One, you need some seed of life which (for us anyway) would be in the form of a simple protein or amino acid that somehow starts reproducing itself. I don't know about you, but when I put a few hundred carbon atoms together, it doesn't spring to life and start making copies of itself. Maybe after a few billion years it could - I dunno.
Second, you need that reproducing organism to mutate perfectly, while at the same time branching off if you wish to have life in the abundant variety that we have. Darwin, right? I heard an interesting lesson a while ago. Basically, it stated that you (You! the reader of this blog) are a survivor. You represent a long chain on surviving ancestors. Everyone in your ancestory was successfully born, lived through childhood, met someone, mated, had a baby and raised that baby to full maturity in order to give birth to the next line in your lineage. When you think about it, it's a very thin chain of successes that leads to you. None of the people in your lineage died at birth, none died in wagon accidents before reaching maturity. None of them them died virgins. All of them successfully had sex which lead to pregnancy, which lead to a successful birth. And on and on - it's amazing really.
Anywho, where was I? Oh yeah, evolution would need to successfully reproduce and mutate in just the right way so these simple proteins would eventually turn into lizards. Or fish. Or birds. Or whales. And you need to do all of this in 10 or 12 billion years.
Furthermore, one (or many) of these surviving species needs to develop a way to think with their meat. When you consider it in terms of what an alien from another star would see, that's what we do. We think with meat! We think with meat, and we communicate by pushing oxygen and nitrogen through hollow pockets of meat. We record history and try to understand the Universe around us by writing with pens held by meat. Wierd really.
Now, you have to think in terms of a civilization. Because life is easier when you develop civilization. These ugly bags of water and meat have to use their meat-brains to figure out how to live together without just eating each other. Then, we have to figure out technology - how do we communicate with others on other planets, in other solar systems? And how do we develop technology for science without also producing technology for blowing ourselves up?
If the inhabitants of a planet succeeds in all of these (and probably more), you're in the running for becoming aware of your surroundings. You would then have the potential to see the Universe around you. And you have 12 billion years to do it.
Did I say 12 billion? Well maybe, but you would'd have to start with a bunch of hydrogen and start from there. That's the sum of your raw materials. A whole bunch of the simplest atoms possible. One proton, one electron and that's it.
I'm not going to sit here and say that it's impossible. I just want you to consider the notion that we not just the sum result of hydrogen and 12 billion years of randomness. Human life is extraordinarily rare. We're not just one in "N", we're one in N to the Nth. And you (the person reading this right now) are one in N to the Nth to the 6 billionth in terms of people who are alive right now. Now, aren't you pretty rare? I think you are.
