Many people are sure that our world, nature, man, the Universe - all this points to the divine creator who created all this. As far as we know, the Earth exists with a mass of conditions that are ideal for our existence, and no other world can compare with it.
- We live in a particularly privileged place. We live on a planet that has all the essential ingredients for life, including these:
- We are at the right distance from the Sun, so the temperatures on our planet are convenient for life.
“We have the right atmospheric pressure to have liquid water on the surface.
“We have all the right ingredients - the right balance of heavy elements and organic molecules - for life to emerge.
- We have the right amount of water to have oceans and continents on the planet.
- Life appeared on our planet very early, existed all this time and gave us life: intelligent, conscious beings.
Look at other worlds - the differences are amazing.
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It is often said that the mere appearance of the Earth is in itself unlikely, that such a planet with the conditions that led to our appearance is statistically impossible, even if we take into account all the stars and galaxies in the universe. The emergence of intelligent life is so bizarrely unexpected, given all the factors that should have flowed in a strictly defined order, that our universe had to be specially designed to give us life. Otherwise, the chances of our emergence should have been so small that it could hardly have happened by accident.
For many people, this argument is very compelling. But it’s important to ask ourselves three questions to make sure we are fair in this line of reasoning. We will ask them one at a time.
1. What conditions are necessary for the emergence of life from a scientific point of view?
2. How rare or common are these conditions in the Universe?
3. Finally, if we do not find life in the places and conditions in which we expect to find it, does this prove the involvement or existence of God?
These are big, serious questions, so let's try to be precise.
What conditions are necessary for the emergence of life from a scientific point of view?
In other words, here on Earth everything happened according to the same scenario, but what of this scenario is necessary for the life we know, and what happens in its absence, and can also happen elsewhere?
The conditions that we listed above are based on the assumption that any life in the Universe should be like us in the sense that it will be based on the same chemistry of atoms and molecules, need liquid water and be in a non-toxic environment. By these criteria alone, we already know about the existence of billions of planets in our galaxy that correspond to them.
Our exploration of exoplanets - worlds around stars outside our own - has shown that there are many solid planets that orbit just the right distance from their central stars to have liquid water on their surfaces, and maybe even an atmosphere similar to ours. Our technical capabilities are constantly improving, and soon we will be able to make sure of this for sure. The James Webb Space Telescope will help us with this.
But aren't there other parameters we should be concerned about? What if we were too close to the center of the galaxy; then the abundance of supernovae would fry the planet and sterilize it? What if we didn't have Jupiter to protect us from the asteroid belt; the abundance of asteroids could clear out any life that tries to survive? What about the fact that the universe is relatively young and we're already here? Many stars will live for trillions of years, but we only have a billion or two before the Sun is hot enough to boil the oceans. When the universe was too young, there weren't enough heavy elements. We could have appeared at just the right time, not only to take our place in the universe, but also to witness the existence of other galaxies before dark energy chases them away.
But there are answers to all these questions: most likely not. If we were closer to the center of the galaxy, the rate of formation and supernovae would be higher. But, this means that heavy elements would be created faster, thereby giving early opportunities for the development of life. Here on the outskirts, we had to wait longer. When it comes to sterilizing a planet, you need to be very close to a supernova for this to happen - much closer than stars are usually located close to the center of the galaxy. Even if we were directly in the path of a beam of gamma rays, it probably would only sterilize half the world, since it does not last long.
The atmosphere of such a world will not be completely blown away, the deep ocean waters will be untouched, and complex life will have ways to return. After life settles in the world or “goes under the skin,” as some biologists say, it is very difficult to destroy it completely.
The same goes for asteroids. Yes, a solar system without a planet like Jupiter will have more asteroids, but without such a planet, the orbits of the asteroids will remain intact. What else will throw them into the inner solar system? Will this make extinctions more rare or more frequent? Even if there are more collisions, will this make complex (intelligent) life less likely, or will an increase in extinction events, on the contrary, make it more diverse? These arguments are not that strong. But even if we take them into account, we are left with quite a lot of worlds - from tens, hundreds to millions - that meet the criteria in our galaxy alone.
Finally, we appeared relatively early, but the ingredients for stars and solar systems like ours existed in large quantities in galaxies for many billions of years before our solar system was formed. We can even find potentially habitable worlds in which life could be 7-9 billion years old. So we definitely may not be the first. The conditions that are needed for life to emerge, as far as we can measure, exist throughout the galaxy, and therefore throughout the universe.
How rare or common are these conditions throughout the universe?
The well-known Drake equation and its optimistic estimates do not help scientists. This equation is used to estimate the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy.
At best, we can say - by extrapolating what has already been discovered to what has not yet been studied - there may be anywhere from 1 to 10 trillion planets in our galaxy that revolve around stars, of which 40-80 billion are candidates that have all three of these qualities:
- these are solid planets, - located where terrestrial temperatures are usually observed, - and capable of containing water in a liquid state on the surface.
That is, there, near the stars, there are worlds in the right places. In addition to this, they must have the ingredients necessary for a complex life. What are these ingredients and how common are they?
Believe it or not, these heavy elements - assembled into complex molecules - will be inevitable by this point in the universe. Enough stars have outlived their lives and died for all the elements of the periodic table to exist in high enough abundances throughout the galaxy. But will they be able to get together correctly? Let's look at the heart of our galaxy, the molecular cloud Sagittarius B. In addition to water, sugars, benzene rings, and other organic molecules, we can find more complex ones.
Like the ethyl ester of formic acid and n-propyl cyanide, the former of which is responsible for the raspberry smell. Complex molecules can be found in every molecular cloud, protoplanetary disk, and stellar outflow that we can reach and measure. Thus, in our galaxy alone, there are billions of chances, and the likelihood of intelligent life will not only be inevitable - it will be guaranteed.
But first we need to make life out of life. It is a feat that is not sickly, and one of the biggest mysteries for scientists in all disciplines: the problem of abiogenesis. At some point it happened to us, perhaps in space or in the ocean, in the atmosphere or elsewhere, but it happened. So far, we have not been able to replicate this feat in the laboratory. Therefore, there is no way to say how likely it is to create living from non-living, although we are trying very hard. Perhaps this happens on 10-25% of eligible planets, which will already be 20 billion planets in our galaxy. This is our most optimistic assessment.
But she may also be less optimistic. Was life on Earth probable? In other words, if we were to conduct a chemical experiment to form our solar system over and over again, how likely would life appear in it? Hundreds, thousands, or millions of times? Even if the chance is one in a million, if you take 40 billion planets with the right temperature, there will be at least 40,000 planets in our galaxy alone with life on them.
But we are looking for something else. We're looking for large, specialized, multicellular, tool-using creatures. And since we have many intelligent animals on these indicators, we are interested in a special type of intelligence. In particular, the kind of intelligence with which we can talk, despite the giant distances between the stars. How common is this? It takes billions of years, roughly the same temperature, the right evolutionary steps, and a lot of luck to go from the first reproducing organic molecule to man. What are the chances of this happening? One in a hundred? Maybe. At least one in a hundred planets can be able to maintain a constant temperature, avoid 100% of major disasters, and teach their life to use tools.
But the chance may be lower; we are not so much an inevitable consequence of evolution as an accident. Even a one in a million chance may be too optimistic for humanoid animals to appear on Earth with the right ingredients for life. It may well take a billion planets like ours for a human to appear at least once.
If we take an optimistic estimate of our optimistic estimate, at least 200 million worlds in our galaxy can respond to our signals. But if we take a pessimistic estimate, there will be a one in 25,000 chance that there is at least one such civilization in our galaxy. In other words, life is quite possible, but intelligent life is not. It is also worth admitting that there is a lot we do not know and cannot assert with a fair amount of certainty.
And finally …
If we do not find life in the places and conditions in which we expect to find, does that prove the existence of God?
Of course, there are people who say yes, it proves. But as for me, this is not the best approach.
Not that I am a believer, but I have respect for believers. Science is wonderful in that it is available to anyone who wants to study the Universe and learn more and more new things about it. Why should faith in God require science to give a concrete answer to a question to which we do not know the answer? Will faith be shaken if another planet has the same chemistry and the same form of life as on our own? Will it be some semblance of spiritual triumph if we search the galaxy and find no other sentient species?
Or are your beliefs and beliefs - whatever they may be - contrary to whatever scientific truths the universe reveals about itself, no matter what they are? The professional opinion of almost all scientists studying the Universe is that life on other planets will certainly be found and that if we search very diligently, then we will find the first biological signatures of another life in this generation. Regardless of whether there is intelligent life beyond Earth or, more doubtfully, intelligent life in our galaxy, which is still alive, the results of answering this scientific question in no way confirm or deny the existence of God. In the same way, the answer to the question of what appeared earlier on Earth - an egg or a chicken - will in no way help to answer the question of the existence or absence of any higher beings.
The truth about the Universe is carved into the very body of the Universe and is revealed to us in the process of research. Science may never prove or disprove the existence of God, but if we use our convictions and beliefs as a pretext for our scientific quest, we risk depriving ourselves of true knowledge, not finding what we could find.
Don't let faith guide your scientific quest. Just like science is unlikely to be able to have a strong impact on the personal religious beliefs of each of us.
ILYA KHEL