Abstract
The construction of giant telescopes at the beginning of the twentieth century combined with the advent of digital computers and rocket science in the last part of the twentieth century totally changed mankind’s thoughts about how common life, and especially intelligent life, may be in the universe. Our knowledge of the physical size of our universe suddenly exploded in 1925 when the astronomer Edwin Hubble looked through what was then the largest and most powerful telescope (Mt. Wilson Observatory in California) in the world and discovered the existence of galaxies located outside our own Milky Way galaxy (Fig. 1.1a, b). Up to that point in time, most astronomers believed our Milky Way galaxy was itself the whole universe, with nothing existing beyond the most distant stars we could see with our best telescopes.
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Notes
- 1.
The largest known star in our Milky Way galaxy is VY Canis Majoris , which is located 5,000 light years from the Earth and has a diameter that is estimated to be approximately 2,000 times greater than our own sun. And, at the other end of the size scale, there are many stars that are less than 1/10 the diameter of our sun which are known as “brown” dwarfs since they are not large and massive enough to trigger nuclear fusion in their cores and, therefore, are not very bright.
- 2.
Having said this, I feel I must also add that some very competent scientists also believe that the leftover remnants of some of the largest exploding stars, i.e., those invisible things we call “black holes”, may be the gateways to these other multiverses or parallel universes. Some scientists have even been bold enough to suggest that some of these other universes may operate using completely different laws of physics and chemistry from those of our own universe and some may even be totally devoid of this thing we earthlings loosely refer to as life.
- 3.
In my last book (From dying stars to the birth of life) I somewhat jokingly, but quite seriously, indicated that traveling to Proximi Centauri in a modern Jumbo jet, if such a thing was possible, at an average speed of 600Â miles/h would require 4.6 million years to achieve.
- 4.
Thus, when our astronomers look at Proximi Centauri through their telescopes, they are seeing this star exactly as it appeared 4.3 years ago, and that tiny speck of light that is 13.2 billion light years away is what that galaxy looked like long before humans or even the planet we live on was even created.
- 5.
Some scientists, including Steven Hawking , even believe that, in addition to space, energy, and matter, time itself also did not exist before the Big Bang. If this is so, then in a very real sense NOTHING existed before the Big Bang! Dr. Hawking believes that, since nothing existed before the Big Bang, including time, the universe could not have been created by a Higher Power.
- 6.
The first actual exoplanets were discovered by radio astronomers in 1992. Two large (Jupiter size) planets were found to be orbiting a small extremely massive type of star known as a “pulsar”. Pulsars are the left over remnants of giant stars that have undergone supernova explosions. Such stars are extremely small (only a few miles in diameter) and extremely massive (weighing as much as the original star before the supernova). They also rotate (spin) at incredibly fast rates and emit huge amounts of deadly radiation that would fry any life on any nearby planets. Whether exoplanets circling pulsars are formed before the occurrence of supernova events or afterwards is unknown. It is ironical, however, that the first exoplanets discovered by astronomers are, by any scientific criteria we know of, totally hostile to any known forms of life our best life scientists currently believe could exist. Subsequent exoplanet discoveries have continued to find that the majority of exoplanets are also unfriendly, at least by mankind’s current standards. While life may not be rare in the universe, human-like critters may be quite rare.
- 7.
However, for retired professors like me whose memory skills may have declined slightly, I need to alert my readers that, in addition to boggling our brains with talk of extreme size, extreme distance, extreme numbers, and even extreme periods of time (i.e., “deep time ”); the new planet hunters have now come up with one more means of confusing us. When they label a single star they typically tell us which star catalog it is listed in (e.g., the Gliese catalog ) and give it a number, e.g., Gliese 667 . When the star is a member of a double or triple star system, they then use capital letters to distinguish which member of the system the star is, e.g., Gliese 557A or Gliese 667B, if a double star, and Gliese 667C if it is the third member of a triple star system. When a single star has one or more exoplanets orbiting it, the astronomers use lower cap lettering to designate which one it is, e.g., Gliese 581a or Gliese 581b or Gliese 581a, b, c, etc. if they want to list more than one of the planets that are circling the star. Now, if a member of a double or triple star has planets orbiting it, the astronomers then label it as Gliese 667Aa, or Gliese 667Ab, and so on, to designate which star in the star system is being referred to as well as which exoplanet is being referenced. If I ever see a reference to some star like Whoopi 101Cz, I will definitely assume life is probably rampant in the universe!
- 8.
The reason these two star systems are named “Gliese 581 and 667”, respectively, even though located in different parts of the night sky, is that they are listed in the same astronomy star catalog, that was published by Wilhelm Gliese , a famous nineteenth century German astronomer. This particular star catalog only lists stars that are located at a distance of 65 light years or less.
- 9.
On June 5, 2012, the planet Venus moved in front of the sun (transit event) and produced a reduction in the total brightness of the sun of approximately 0.1 % (one in a thousand parts, i.e., 1/1,000). While, with the appropriate equipment to protect the eyes (special sun blocking lenses) from the sun’s harmful rays, it is possible to see Venus crossing in front of the sun, the human eye is not capable of detecting a brightness change that is this small.
- 10.
The Galapagos Islands are where Charles Darwin discovered how evolution works. Darwin observed how the wildlife fauna, including turtles and small birds called finches, were able to survive on the different islands of the Galapagos chain and very slowly evolve into new species.
- 11.
While many life scientists now believe that the source of the first carbon-based life on our planet were the hydrothermal vents, other scientists believe life on Earth developed elsewhere. A few scientists, including Jeffrey Bada and Reza Ghadiri , believe that the combination of lightening and hot gases extruded from volcanoes may have fostered the creation of the first life on Earth. The hot materials and gases that belch up from deep in the Earth via volcanic activity are very rich in life friendly nutrients. The interaction between atmospheric lightening and these nutrient materials may have sparked the creation of the first building blocks of life, including amino acids .
- 12.
The amount of radiation hitting Europa every day is 540 rem which would be fatal to unprotected humans and is ten times greater than that found in the Earth’s van Allen radiation belt. Thus, what is “bad” for humans could be “good” for bugs living on Europa. Score another point for the possible extreme diversity of life in our universe!
- 13.
A few scientists have even suggested that some of the largest of the objects in our asteroid belt (e.g., Ceres which has a diameter of 590Â miles) may host small subsurface salt water oceans that might contain tholins and be warm enough to allow the development of carbon-based microbial life forms .
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Cranford, J.L. (2015). Scientists Believe Intelligent Life May Be More Common in the Universe than Previously Considered Possible. In: Astrobiological Neurosystems. Astronomers' Universe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10419-5_1
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