HUMAN DESTINY: or Learn to Think BIG!

IT COULD BE that human kind may be the sole avenue the Universe has to consciousness.

According to two scientists at the Australian National University, Aditya Chopra and Charles H. Lineweaver, we should consider the fragility of life throughout the Universe.

In this article, they address Fermi's Paradox, which draws attention to the increasing number of planets that astronomers are discovering where one might expect life to arise.  Paradoxically, there appears to be virtually no evidence that life has thrived anywhere else but here on Earth.  This article has attracted a lot of attention in this past week.

At such great distances, truly astronomical, how is it possible to determine whether life is present on planet?  One way is to use spectroscopy to analyze the planet's atmosphere.  Where humans now live, over billions of years, early life transformed the atmosphere, increasing levels of oxygen and nitrogen while decreasing the proportion of carbon dioxide.  If these constituent proportions show up as more like what we believe the original atmosphere of Earth to have been, we might conclude that life as we know it is not present.  Chopra and Lineweaver suggest that life might very well have begun on many planets but was not able to get sufficient hold to be able to 'terraform' the surface.  Thus conditions may have been adverse to life after only a brief appearance. 

While we still do not understand exactly how life began, most cosmologists and astro-biologists believe that early planetary conditions, such as after the cessation of sustained bombardment by meteorites about 4 billion years ago (4Bya), cooling and constant rain produced conditions favorable to life processes appearing.  Increasing complexity of life forms over the next 3.8 By finally led to intelligent life forms, of which humans are the superior example.  We have a long way to go to become sufficiently intelligent, in my view.

Though still mysterious to us, consciousness at some level seems to be shared by vertebrates with sufficiently complex nervous systems.  To get to this point has required a lot of time and considerable 'luck'.  If Chopra and Lineweaver are almost right, then it is likely that humans, with our ever-increasing knowledge of how the Universe works, as far as the proverbial eye can see, may be the only consciousness the Universe has of itself.

In their book, The View From the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos, Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams make the point that we humans a currently nicely placed to think about this role.

I suppose that, by obdurate striving or out of just plain ignorance, we might ignore this invitation.  Far easier to keep on with our tragic and silly wars, disregard of human worth, or whatever else might be proposed should occupy our interest.  How could anyone suggest seriously that this might be our destiny, to lead the Universe into an understanding of Itself?

My reading of cosmology leads me to consider that, if not struck out by a vast natural disaster like the collision with a very large meteor some 65 Mya,  or by devising our own destruction, or by determination to think as small as possible, we could arrive at a sustainable occupation of this planet, our Earth, our Mother, for at least a billion years more.  What might become of us should our prowess and sagacity continue to grow over such an expanse of time?