STARS
By Jerry
Tatum 10/2003
HAVE you
ever found yourself in a high place -- say 2000 ft or more above sea level --
at night with a clear, cloudless sky with no city lights around to obscure the
view? And have you surveyed the night
skies under such conditions? If so, have
you wondered -- and wondered? What’s
that all about -- that tapestry of twinkle?
What’s out there-- are there folks - beings -
creatures out there? Are they like
us? Or are they totally different
looking from us? Can they think? Talk?
Read and Write? Vote? Are there
planets like ours with trees, animals, insects, spiders, flowers? Are there waterfalls, mountains, rain, snow and
sandstorms? Do they have poetry, music,
gourmet meals? Just what do they eat???
Imagination and
curiosity are partly a factor of intelligence -- but more so they are a factor
of developed attitude. Some people are
notoriously incurious. Confronted with
such a spectacle, they would mentally process something like: Very pretty, but
idle speculation will not provide me with knowledge or facts which are
unavailable. “Honey-- where’s the TV
guide and what’s for dinner? Please hand
me a beer.
The innate curious
amongst us on the other hand, would process differently. The
would ask themselves all the above questions, and wonder about what it
meant. If there were other sentient
(thinking) creatures out there, how did they get there? For that matter, how did we get there? Is our development related to that of alien
life on other worlds? Where and how did
it all start? Why? And where will it go from here? What’s the
purpose of all this, anyway?
Being one of the innate
curious type, I will dwell into some of these speculations in the next little
while, armed with some scientific fact, some history, some speculation, and
little likelihood of answering any of the questions. Open your minds fully to the possibilities and join me in this
mental and philosophical journey. People
have done it since the beginning of mankind -- OOPS -- peoplekind. Back after the station break.
SOURCES:
1. Gallileo’s Daughter
by Dava Sobel; Walker Publishing
Co 1999
2. Other
Worlds by Paul Davies;
Penguin Books 1988
3. Are We
Alone by Paul Davies;
Orion Productions 1995
4. The
5th Miracle by Paul Davies; Orion Productions 1999
5. Quest
for a Theory of Everything by Stephen Hawkins 1992
6. Earliest
manlike Ape freepages.geneology.com (Internet)
7. Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
www.utm.edu
8. Atoms,
Elements, Molecules, Compounds, and Ions http://cator.hsc.ecu
9. History
of Conflict between Religion and Science www.
Positive atheism.org
STARGAZING
IN HISTORY
On
In the summer of 1609, he was distracted from
his studies of physics by news of a Dutch development, the spyglass. Galileo
acquired one at his first opportunity, and seeing the advantages of this device
for military uses, he set out to study and improve it. He redesigned it making
the image magnification much more powerful, grinding and polishing his own
lenses, and
Voila -- he had invented the telescope.
His first telescope had a magnifying power of 20.
For a time, he studied
the face of the moon, and inspired by the details available, he set out to
further improve the design of the telescope, making it still more powerful ( now improved to 30X power). He trained his new invention
on the stars, and quickly distinguished between the two types of stars, those
fixed in position (stars) and those that wandered through the skies (planets).
He stated “ Planets show their globes perfectly round
and spherical and are flooded all over with light. The fixed stars never appear circular, and
their light has the aspect of
blazes which scintillate a great deal” Thus, tool-aided astronomy had its birth. In
separating the stars from the planets, and finding other planets in space,
Galileo had confirmed that there are “other worlds”.
Of course, this interest in
the heavens was not new. Even primitive people had
observed the skies in awe and wonder. But unarmed with basic science or tools
of magnification, they had left their studies to the future and used their
knowledge principally for celestial navigation, and for religious or mystical
conjecture and poetry.
It is even more
interesting that ancient cultures believed openly in alien life in space and it
was not until the rigid Christianity in the centuries around Galileo that this
suggested conflicts with religion. Below
are excerpts from a philosophical poem written by Lucretius,
a Roman poet and philosopher
98-55BC
THERE ARE
MANY WORLDS
Now here is something we
must not think probable,
Since space is infinite
on every side,
Since atoms numberless
throughout the mighty universe
Fly here and there, by
motion everlasting, e’er implied,
That this one world of
ours, this earth and sky
Alone were brought to
birth.
Beyond the confines of
this earth we know,
Nature does nothing.
Particularly as the
world we know
Was made by Nature thus:
The atoms of their own
accord
Jostled from time to
time by chance,
In random fashion,
clashed, and blindly, heedlessly
And oft in vain,
Until at last were
unions suddenly achieved
To be the starting
points of mighty things,
Of
earth and sea and sky, of every living thing.
And so I say again,
again you must confess
That somewhere in the
universe
Are
other meetings of the atom stuff resembling this of ours;
And these the aether holds in greedy grip.
For when the atom stuff
is there,
And space in which the
atom stuff may move,
And neither thing nor
cause to bring delay,
The process of creation
must go on; things
must be made.
Now as it is,
If atom stocks are
inexhaustible,
Greater than power of
living things to count,
If Nature’s same
creative power were present too
To throw the atoms into
unions -- exactly as united now,
Why then confess you
must
That
other worlds exist in other
regions of the sky,
And
different tribes of men, kinds of wild beasts.
This further argument
occurs:
Nothing in nature is
produced alone;
Nothing is born unique,
or grows unique alone.
ASTRONOMY
AND RELIGION
`
By the time of Galileo’
telescope, the
current scientific community and the Christian church had accepted the
Aristotelian cosmos theory; i.e. The earth was the center of the universe, and
the sun and other bodies all circled the earth.
Lacking tools of
closer examination, scientists accepted Aristotelian theory as
fact; furthermore, it was not really in
conflict with Christian theology of the time- or at least was easy to
accommodate as it certified the uniqueness and importance of earth and its
inhabitants. With the issue of Galileo’s
first two books, the challenge to Aristotle’s theory was in place. Other
astronomers and the church reacted vigorously.
Galileo had refuted the theories of Aristotle and replaced them with
then newer teachings of Copernicus.
Copernicus, a Prussian
born in 1507 had
studied the Ptolmeic and Pythagorean systems from his
youth, and was entranced by astronomy.
After thirty six years of hesitation, he published his book in 1543
establishing the theory of a heliocentric system, with earth and the other planets
circling the sun. His hesitation was in fear of outraging the church with views
contrary to “revealed truth” and would surely bring him punishment. As expected, the inquisition labeled his work
“that false Pythagorean doctrine utterly contrary to the Holy scriptures”. In denouncing the Copernicus system as being
in contradiction to revelation, the ecclesiastical authorities stated “that such theories dethrone
the earth from her central dominating position, to give her many equals and not
a few superiors, and deemed to diminish her claims upon divine regard.” A copy
of his publication was brought to him on his death bed.
Galileo, in supporting
the theories of Copernicus was promptly summoned to the court of the Holy inquisitioners on the charge that he was teaching a
doctrine utterly contrary to the Scriptures, and was given the opportunity to
renounce this heresy and abstain from all future writing or teaching of such
views. He complied for 16 years, then
compelled by new
intellectual enthusiasm, he published the work, “The System of the
World” revisiting and again promoting the Copernican theory. He was arrested, forced to kneel with a hand
on the Bible and abjure and curse the works he had published; then he was
subjected to house imprisonment for the last 10 years of his life. His is only one drama of early scientists
suffering imprisonment or even burning at the stake for views of astronomy
deemed heretical to the scriptures.
The views of origin of
life as a miracle persist even in an age when space travel is now common and
space viewing with grossly improved technology is firmly in place. And the conflict between Christian theology
and science are more hotly debated. When
an early astronaut first orbited the earth for some time, and was welcomed back
to earth with much fanfare, it is reported that one reporter for a Christian
magazine asked the astronaut somewhat dubiously, “Did you see God when you were
up there? What does he look like?”. The incredulous astronaut reportedly
replied: “Yes I did. She was
black.” There is apparently no room for
accommodation in strict Christian theology for space travel -- and much less
possibility for alien life.
The English philosopher,
Richard Bentley confronts this narrow view of the origin of life with the
thought: If one chooses to believe that
God created this earth for the primacy and use of mankind, why would God not have also staffed
the planets of other suns with intelligent life. Why must Earth be thought to
have exclusive rights to the whole universe?
ALIEN
LIFE
So just what do
scientists really know and think about alien life on other planets? Since Galileo’s telescope arrived, many other
scientific advances have been made for examining space and recording results.
Galaxies have been photographed in vivid glorious color and put on Internet for
anyone’s casual observation. (See NASA.org). The
Hubble telescope has been used successfully for many years now to photograph the cosmos
at great magnification, from orbit, free from the obscuration of earth’s wet
and dusty atmosphere. Jovian moons have been
photographed. Nebulae and pulsars and black holes and supernovae and other new
viewings have increased our knowledge and our vocabulary ,
as new terms had to be coined for new celestial features.
In October, 1992 NASA launched a
serious new effort to search for alien
life in the universe. Know as SETI --
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence -- it consists of groups of radio telescopes located
around the world to continuously monitor radio frequencies at varied
frequencies bands, targeting star-systems in hopes of hearing intelligent radio
signals from outer space. In the fourth
century BC, the Greek philosopher Epicuras wrote a
letter to Herodotus:
[There are infinite worlds both like and unlike this
world of ours. For the atoms being infinite in number....are borne on far
out into space. For those atoms which
are of such nature that a world could be created by them or made by them have
not been used up on either one world or a limited number of worlds.
So that there nowhere exists an
obstacle to the infinite number of worlds....]
Thus the belief in life
in outer space has philosophically been part of our existence since the fourth
century BC and possibly much earlier. The teachings of Epicurus (atomism) were
a primary influence on Lucretius and much of his
poetry and literature.
The SETI search for signals not of natural
origin (matter radiates signals too) has
not yielded any results, but scientists are now beginning to understand why the
possibility for signals from space is unlikely --or at least improbable. It does not suggest that the probability of
life in outer space is impossible; rather it takes in account the
problems created by the time and duration of life on a planet.
Many cosmologists now
believe that the universe came into being 15 to 20 billion years ago with the
big bang. (They don’t know why!). [There is a second conflicting school of
thought that the universe is a steady-state thing. That is there was no real
beginning and there will be no end -- it is eternal, but with constantly dying
and newborn heavenly bodies. ] Over the
billions of (earth) years after the alleged big bang, the galaxies and the
solar systems gradually took form under the influence of gravity. Our solar system may have formed some 4
billion years ago and commenced cooling over the ensuing millions of
years. Earth, when formed, was believed
to be very hot and mostly ocean. The
only land was volcanic peaks which belched out streams of hot molten lava. The atmosphere was dense and unbreathable, devoid of free oxygen. As the earth cooled over millions of years,
the atoms reformed under intense gravity into heavier elements. Earth, and other planets also endured constant
bombardment from meteorites, asteroid, and other forms of “star-dust”
containing all the heavier elements necessary for the creation of life forms. When this was far
enough along so that carbon, nitrogen , oxygen,
hydrogen and phosphorus and iron were present we had set the stage for
biogenesis --- the beginning of life on earth.
But archeological
fossils only trace simple single cell life forms back as far as 1 billion
years, (these were similar to amoebae or protozoa). The oldest “complex” life form known as Ediocara dates back to about 560 million years and
was found in
Rounding off numbers
cavalierly, we
see that technological man has only occupied earth for the last 600 years or so
out of an earth life span of perhaps 10 billion years. This figures out to 6 x 
% , or
0.00006 % of earth’s apparent history. Any form of early man would
exist on earth only 9 million out of earth’s 10 billion year history or about
0.0001% of earth’s history. So what’s the point??
Just
this. Although cosmologists believe that all matter
was unloosed by the big bang, the solidification and formation of the universe
would have stretched over many billions of years. So other civilizations (if
they exist) could be a billion years apart from us either before or
behind. The time span is so huge, and
the time targets so tiny that the probability of coexisting with other
intelligent mortals on other planets at the same time is indeed very remote. On
the other hand they may have already existed, or may sometime in the future
exist. So establishing contact will be problematical at the least.
BIOGENESIS
- THE TRICKY PART
The theories that go into
biogenesis are highly speculative and based on the basic sciences of
archeology, biology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy. Imagination and reason
are used to patch in the important parts missing from our current scientific
knowledge. Biogenesis is basically the art of autonomously developing from
inert chemical molecules into a living thing.
Living things differ from non living things in the following ways:
Ÿ
Autonomy: Living things do things their way, i.e. move,
eat, reproduce. They are not immobile like a rock.
Ÿ
Reproduction: Living things can reproduce their own species
(except mules) according to a
complex genetic code. All living things have DNA. Exception: crystals can also reproduce.
Ÿ
Metabolism:
Living things have metabolism which means they require food, drink, air or
whatever chemicals they require to metabolize. It also means they are not
immortal, but live a fixed life span, based on when they wear out chemically or
nutritionally..
Ÿ
Nutrition: In order to metabolize, they must feed. Nutrients
are peculiar to the life form.
Ÿ
Complexity: Life forms of all types are exceedingly
complex. Their activity is unpredictable. The parts of the life-form must
interact in a complex manner to support life. Consider the human nervous
system, lungs, heart, blood, brain, etc....
Ÿ
Growth: Living things grow and develop from an early
stage to their late stages prior to expiring. Thus they change form during
their life.
Ÿ
Information
content: The information for reproducing
is passed on from the parent in the form of genes. The source of the information in the genetic
code remains mystery to the scientist. Where does it develop and from what
information source?
Ÿ
Permanence and
change: Reproductions follow the genetic
code to build an identical form. But outside influences count too. Environment
causes life forms to adapt and mutate, thus gradually becoming different from
their ancestral forms.
The first great debate
was whether the elements necessary for life (carbon, nitrogen, basic protein ingredients) could “autonomously” form on
earth due to evolving conditions and constant bombardment of cosmic energy or
whether the necessary ingredients were brought to earth by cosmic bombardment
of meteors and comets. Either way, the elements were formed, and make up part
of the list of chemical elements known today as our periodic table, all the
chemical elements found on earth today, which includes all the chemicals
necessary for the development of life forms.
Newer instruments for
observation of the heavens such as X-ray, infrared, and other wavelength
specific telescopes, coupled with mass spectrographs absolutely confirm the existence in
outer space, in other star groups, asteroid belts , meteors, and comets and in
dust clouds in space of these life-forming essential elements. It is believed
that they were created in the process of solidifying other stars, many of which
exploded and projected these elements into outer space as meteorites or
asteroids. It is now a firm belief that
we living organisms on earth are literally made of star dust.
The next great(er) debate is, given the eventual presence of the
necessary elements to make living organisms, how did they get “arranged” into
the architecture necessary for life. Where and under what influence did the
architecture (genetic codes) develop. What breathed life into one set of
complex chemical molecules, but not into simpler molecules (rocks and minerals
in general). As yet, we have no definitive answers.
The puzzle gets even murkier,
when one distinguishes between “life” and “sentient” or conscious life. While many wild or domestic creatures
obviously have “intelligence”, the intelligence does not extend to the
capability of
creativity or invention. A
porpoise has the intelligence, they say of a 9 yr. old human; but to our knowledge, no porpoise has
been able to create or play a symphony or paint art. Porpoises , apes ,
dogs, and chimpanzees (not cats) have been taught to communicate with humans
and to register understanding of human speech. But no creatures other than man
has demonstrated the capacity for creating complex innovations -- for building complex
structures or mechanisms for some obscure use fashioned in his imagination; i.e. a typewriter, a kitchen appliance, an automobile, an atom
bomb. Most intelligence demonstrated by
the chimpanzees, porpoises, and other bright animals seems to stem from
reacting to outside influence -- or learning by rote to perform tricks for reward. Many animals (beavers) build their dwelling
or operate with simple tools to aid in feeding or housing themselves. There is a big gap indeed in that and
developing a system capable of sending wireless communication or of carrying a
man to the moon.
The mystery deepens; what is the source
chemically or environmentally of this deeper insight, imagination, and mental sophistication that man seems to
have and other earth species do not. Are
there species in outer space that share this sophistication? Have they developed a technology similar or
superior to ours?
AND
FINALLY
Scientists and engineers
do not know the answers to these cosmic mysteries. But they are questioning them. They are curious and actively pursuing the science for
answers. They are part of the innately
curious of our species. They have cloned
creatures in the laboratory using DNA to see if it could be done. They have successfully engineered purposeful
genetic mutations on plant life, and on animals to endow the mutated offspring
with an improved quality of some desired type.
All of which
has been accompanied with some outcries of controversy and alarm.
(Playing GOD).
The creative powers of
man are not without dangers. As we
develop our technological skills much faster than our social or ethical values,
we are in danger of destroying ourselves with our new knowledge. We have stood on the brink already of global
nuclear disaster as we endured years of stalemated cold wars. We have harnessed
enough destructive power to destroy mankind several times over. But we have not developed socially nor
ethically yet to understand how to feed and clothe and house the hungry and destitute of
our own kind. We have not learned yet to
use our sophisticated
creative powers to the betterment of all life in the universe.
Maybe we will......
Maybe we will......
Maybe aliens will come
and show us. Or maybe they have already developed their technology so far
beyond their social and ethical values, they have destroyed themselves!! Still, my greatest goal in my life is to see/meet
an outer space alien.
Such is the fate of the
innately curious.
The following link has immediate relevancy to this
article. CLICK HERE to view it.