Think you're too old to learn something new?
You're not - and especially when it's something as vital to life as this. Take a quick look at how the earth was formed and what it's made of here at the Museum of Natural History's website:
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/planet-earth/how-has-the-earth-evolved/the-earth-s-crust
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/planet-earth/how-has-the-earth-evolved/the-earth-s-crust
When I graduated from College, I realized that what I learned, was that I didn't know anything. Got a job in my field, and have been learning new things daily, for the last 39 years. I realized the plywood mill was not not going to work out for me, so I took a different path. What I do isn't lucrative, but it is satisfying.
ReplyDeleteNow to really bake your brain, think how much of that 1%, of that slim 25 mile deep crust, actually contains the only known life in the universe, let alone in this solar system? Somewhere between 10% and 25% of that 1%.
ReplyDeleteSure, they've found the signatures of the building blocks of life elsewhere. But that's only building blocks. No life. No spark of life. Anywhere else.
To really really bake one's noodle, think of how few places in the universe exist where the planet is just the right size with just the right amount of gravity with just the right amount of tidal motion induced by a large satellite, said planet located at just the right distance from just the right size and type of sun that produces just the right levels and types of radiation, and said planet having a molten core of iron to produce a radiation belt that blocks the bad solar and galactic radiation. And to have had two huge gas giants start out much closer to the sun than the planet and move outwards, thus cleaning up a lot of the inner system garbage and then serving to block a lot of the outer system garbage from coming in-system.
And then to have just the right amount of collisions and asteroid hits at just the right time to help create that right amount of crust with the right amount of minerals and stuff.
That's the crazy thing. That just enough things happened at just the right time to allow life to start and develop to the point where we are at right now.
How special we are.
And, probably, considering all the sheer coincidences and incidents it took to allow us to be here, the chance that life exists on other worlds is probably really low, like unbelievably low, like most likely we're alone.
Now the brains have found 'Earth-like' planets in other systems. But... usually the planets are twice to three times as large as the Earth. Which means if the planets have gravity that is similar to ours, then there's not a huge molten iron core that creates a radiation barrier. And if the planet that large has a molten iron core, then the gravity is significantly higher on the surface than here on Earth. Neither conditions, high radiation or high gravity, will allow life-as-we-know-it to develop.
Crazy, no?