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It’s a Far Flung Life

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The Pillars of Creation

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Abstract

The Pillars of Creation title given to this book is intended to emphasize the fundamental role of star formation in the transformation of an initially sterile, low-complexity universe into a dynamic and fecund environment capable of evolving ever more complex structures. Indeed, somewhere, and indeed, somehow, in the long and twisted chain of star-created opportunities that have existed over the past 12 billion years, life appeared in the universe.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The classic laboratory experiment pertaining to the in situ generation of the complex molecules needed to kick-start life is that by developed by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in the 1950s. Numerous variants of the original experiment have since been performed and it is reasonably clear that complex organic molecules can be generated within and upon the young Earth The only question now is, did the chemistry additionally ignite the spark of life ab initio on the raw and newly formed Earth?

  2. 2.

    Part of astronomical folklore has it that one of the Nakhla meteorite fragments struck and killed a dog; this is now known to be an entirely apocryphal story.

  3. 3.

    These were the development of technologies for the greater good of humankind.

  4. 4.

    This is based on the main sequence lifetime varying as t ms(Gyr) = 10 (M Sun/M star)2.5, and the mass of KIC 8462852 is taken as 1.43 times that of the Sun [19].

  5. 5.

    This can be contrasted against Earth’s strongest transmitter power of some 1013 W.

References

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  17. Light curve generated with data and analysis programs provided by the NASA Exoplanet Archive website: http://archive.stsci.edu/kepler/data_search.php.

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  22. See Michael Hippke and Daniel Angerhausen paper, KIC 8462852 did likely not fade during the last 100 years, at: arxiv.org/pdf/1601.07314.pdf. The fading issue has additionally been taken-up by Benjamin Montet and Joshua Simon in an August 2016 research paper - arxiv:1608.01316v1.

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  23. Developed by radio astronomer and SETI pioneer Frank Drake in the early1960s, as a means of focusing attention towards the important developmental parameters, the Drake equation is used to estimate the number of active and communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy. While various forms of the equation exist, the standard version asserts that the number of active civilizations within our galaxy N can be expressed as: N = R* · f P · N P · f L · f I · f C · L, where R* is the typical star formation rate, f P is the fraction of stars that have planets, N P is the average number of planets per star that can support life, f L is the fraction of planets that actually develop life, f I is the fraction of life bearing planets that produce intelligent life, f C is the fraction of intelligently habited planets that develop communication technologies that we might be able to detect, and L is the time over which active broadcasts are made. According to how one chooses the input numbers, the outcome of the Drake equation gives a value to N that falls anywhere between 1 (i.e. just us) to hundreds of millions. In many ways the actual value of N ≥ 1 is irrelevant, and the real point of the equation is to emphasis the various channels, and the interconnectedness of those channels, that are likely to be of significance in the eventual emergence of a galactic civilizations. Provided the parameter choices do not result in a value of N = 0 at the present epoch (which would contradict our own existence) then the equation has effectively done its job.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Campion College, At The University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

    Martin Beech

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Beech, M. (2017). It’s a Far Flung Life. In: The Pillars of Creation. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48775-5_6

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