Blog #2 Life The Possibilities

Qa a Re

The Universe is 14 billion years old, give or take.  And this is a scientifically accepted fact.  At first, it was just an intensely hot, exceedingly small area of Space.  Where?  Well, that’s a whole nother inquiry.  The question I’d like to focus on is: When did life first arise in our Cosmos?  Life can be defined as growing, self-aware, self-replicating entities.  Of course, it didn’t begin right away; an embryonic Universe is a very inhospitable place.  Things had to settle down for a while – about a billion years.  And even if one defines the phenomena of life rather broadly, as in being somewhat carbon-based, said life will require heavy elements.  Even the lowliest bacterium contains elements denser than iron, such as nickel, copper, zinc, etc.   And where do heavy elements come from?  Primarily from exploding stars – nova’s, supernovas (and maybe exploding black holes), those are the only phenomenon hot enough to fuse elements denser than iron.  So, therefore, the next question that must be asked is: When did these explosions first start happening?

Timeline:                                   billions  of years ago

Universe began –                           13.7

First  generation stars –               1.0

First nova’s –                                   2 – 3

Second generation stars –           5 – 6    

Naturally, these busting stars spewed forth a great deal of dust and debris.  And gravity, being an inherent aspect of Matter, gradually coalesced this detritus into new stars and planets, ones with heavier elements – a primary ingredient for life.

Conclusion:  So, life, arising from these second-generation stars, has had 6, 7, or perhaps even 8 billion years to gestate.  On the Earth, self-replicating life forms emerged about 3 billion years ago (blue-green algae).  Animate beings – about 800 million years ago; dinosaurs – about 250 million years ago; and finally, about 15 thousand years ago, human civilization began (hunter-gatherers settled into villages).  The big question that screams behind all this is: Given all the time that life has had to arise in our Universe, how come the human civilization is only 15,000 years old?  Surely there must be older congregations of sentient beings out there.  It’s a very big place, our Cosmos.  Could there be societies in the great beyond that are 2, maybe 3 billion years old?  And if so, what would they be like?  Is 2-3 billion years enough time to learn all the secrets that the Universe hides so well?  Finally, and this is the last question (and it’s a doozie) – What is a god?