Lets start with the basics, shall we... Of the 40 or 50 million species or so of organisms living on Earth, we only know about a little 1.8 million... Every living organism we have found so far exhibits metabolism and cellular organisation at least, and most exhibit consciousness... Every living organism, in human knowledge, to have ever existed on Earth, yet, has a carbon-based molecular structure, and its works governed by nitrogenous acids, and nucleotide genetic information... Every single living thing here, even viruses... Most need oxygen and water to hydrolyse their nutritional inputs, and few others are happy to do so with simple organic molecules (basically, we all need electron pair donors, whether oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, etc.) The thing is... We are all Carbon based organisms, our metabolism and genetics based on Organic Molecules, again built upon Carbon, and some viable electronegative non-metals... We developed from simple organic molecules, who learnt how to copy themselves over and over, in the primordial soup of opportunities on our Ancient planet... Whether existing molecules somehow gave birth to us, or the seeds of life propagated here from another part of the Universe, origin unknown... Consciousness and anthropological evolution of Homo sapiens ourselves is filled with obliviated memories... Gradual evolution, or an intellectual instilment from another external factor... Extra-terrestrial beings genetically designing us humans, is quite applicable... From animal sentimentalities to rise upto self-consciousness... Having developed proper speech, language, mechanics, disciplines and sciences and above all, the ability to transmute knowledge, and teach others... No other species has ever done that in such a versatile form, and none can we even see in intermediate stages of such... So, by that treatise, we humans are themselves alienated on the evolutionary tree ! Alien ancestors... We dont know... The will to explore the Cosmos, we have left, to look over to the beyond... Now, wherever we may come from, we are to go somewhere in this vast expanse of Space and Time to meet other Consciousness and Consciences... The most Logical thing we can think of this matter that there are about 10^11 galaxies out there on an average, each having about 10^11 stars, considering that most of them are binary or multiple pairs, there are as many planets as there are stars, about 10^11... Now in this Universe, we get 10^22 planets ! We could take 90% of them as gas giants, so we are left with 10^21 rocky planets ! Even if we take even the most minute fraction of them as those which can support life, we are left with more than a billion billion planets... Exoplanets that have the right conditions to support life ! With such overwhelming numbers, I say it is outrageous not to think of our Universe as brimming with life ! There are tens of billions of organic compounds, 50 of which are essential to life... Radio Telescopes have detected dozens of organic compounds in immense amounts all across inter-stellar space... We are made of star stuff, the stuff of life is all around us... And this my friends is just about Carbon-based life... What about other forms of life, with an entirely different kind of biology and molecular basis of life which we cant even think of ! Apart from elements other than Carbon that show Catenation to some extent (like Silicon), we cannot possibly imagine what different kinds of life we can have from so many elements throughout the Cosmos... Well, we are not too sure if Uranium is the heaviest naturally-occurring element... It is illogical to think that in the vast Cosmic fugue, only our Planet was extremely lucky... Hundreds of planets here in our own galaxy, are inside the Goldilocks zones of their stars and are viable to support life... Extraterrestrial life could perhaps, being given enough time to originate and evolve, be a Cosmic Inevitability... On billions of planets or any place in Space, life may never arise. On some it may arise and die out, or never evolve beyond its simplest forms. And on some small fraction of the worlds, there may develop intelligences and civilizations much greater than our own... And we have no material measure of Greatness, for we being well-adapted to this planet, may sing its praises, biased and prejudiced, which is at the same time, important for us to survive as a species... Whatever and However they are composed of, its obvious to say that our sense of Perception, Theology, Conscience and even what it means to be Conscious could be different from them... We have just begun to wade a little in the shallows of this immense infinite Ocean... Our Perception is limited among the Infinite variety of Electro-Magnetic Spectrum... We have just started to figure the workings of life... Our kind of life in the Universe, and we cannot even contemplate how an entirely different concept of life would exist... Among unconfirmed reports of Extra-terrestrial contacts, we still strive to learn the matter around us, and cant yet detect other beings, whether because they are too far away, or concealed from our perception and vague expectations... Our Past and Future are alien to us, and presently we are on an expedition in this Universe... Our worlds connected... A story that I alone cant tell, the nature of life on Earth, and the search for life elsewhere, are two sides of the same question - who we are ? And the answer, lies within...
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 15:18:39 +0000
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