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An Argument Often Given For Why Earth Couldn't Host Another Form Of Life Is That Once The Life We Know Became Established, It Would Have Eliminated Any Competition Through Natural Selection. But If Another Form Of Life Were Confined To Its Own Niche, There Would Be Little Direct Competition With Regular Life.

-Paul Davies

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An Argument Often Given

Paul Davies

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An Argument Often Given For Why Earth Couldn't Host Another Form Of Life Is That Once The Life We Know Became Established, It Would Have Eliminated Any Competition Through Natural Selection. But If Another Form Of Life Were Confined To Its Own Niche, There Would Be Little Direct Competition With Regular Life.

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Many Investigators Feel Uneasy Stating In Public That The Origin Of Life Is A Mystery, Even Though Behind Closed Doors They Admit They Are Baffled.

If You Get A Drill And Drill Down 5km Beneath The Ground, It's Teeming With Life - Millions Of Tiny Living Fossils. They Resemble The Earliest Life Forms And Suggest That Life Started Under The Ground. The Bible Talks Of Eden As A Sunny Parkland With White Fluffy Clouds, But It Probably Ascended From The Region That We Now Associate With Hell.

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People Take It For Granted That The Physical World Is Both Ordered And Intelligible. The Underlying Order In Nature - The Laws Of Physics - Are Simply Accepted As Given, As Brute Facts. Nobody Asks Where They Came From; At Least Not In Polite Company. However, Even The Most Atheistic Scientist Accepts As An Act Of Faith That The Universe Is Not Absurd, That There Is A Rational Basis To Physical Existence Manifested As Law-like Order In Nature That Is At Least Partly Comprehensible To Us. So Science Can Proceed Only If The Scientist Adopts An Essentially Theological Worldview.

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Most Life On Earth Is Microbes. We've Only Just Scratched The Surface Of The Microbial Realm. Probably Less Than .1% Of Microbes Have Been Classified Let Alone Cultured Or Had Their Genes Sequenced, So Really That Microbial Realm Is A Mystery.

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If We Do Discover More Than One Type Of Life On Earth, We Can Be Fairly Certain That The Universe Is Teeming With It, For It Would Be Inconceivable That Life Started Twice Here But Never On All The Other Earth-like Planets.

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The Secret Of Life Does Not Lie In Its Chemical Basis . . . Life Succeeds Precisely Because It Evades Chemical Imperatives.

The Origin Of Life Is One Of The Great Outstanding Mysteries Of Science.

Astonishingly, In Spite Of Decades Of Research, There Is No Agreed Theory Of Cancer, No Explanation For Why, Inside Almost All Healthy Cells, There Lurks A Highly Efficient Cancer Subroutine That Can Be Activated By A Variety Of Agents - Radiation, Chemicals, Inflammation And Infection.

To Expect Alien Technology To Be Just A Few Decades Ahead Of Ours Is Too Incredible To Be Taken Seriously.

Traditionally, Scientists Have Treated The Laws Of Physics As Simply 'given,' Elegant Mathematical Relationships That Were Somehow Imprinted On The Universe At Its Birth, And Fixed Thereafter. Inquiry Into The Origin And Nature Of The Laws Was Not Regarded As A Proper Part Of Science.

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An Argument Often Given For Why Earth Couldn't Host Another Form Of Life Is That Once The Life We Know Became Established, It Would Have Eliminated Any Competition Through Natural Selection. But If Another Form Of Life Were Confined To Its Own Niche, There Would Be Little Direct Competition With Regular Life.

Through My Scientific Work I Have Come To Believe More And More Strongly That The Physical Universe Is Put Together With An Ingenuity So Astonishing That I Cannot Accept It As A Brute Fact....i Cannot Believe That Our Existence In This Universe Is A Mere Quirk Of Fate, An Accident Of History, An Incidental Blip In The Great Cosmic Drama.

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In Time, [a Martian] Colony Would Grow To The Point Of Being Self- Sustaining. When This Stage Was Reached, Humanity Would Have A Precious Insurance Policy Against Catastrophe At Home. During The Next Millennium There Is A Significant Chance That Civilization On Earth Will Be Destroyed By An Asteroid, A Killer Plague Or A Global War. A Martian Colony Could Keep The Flame Of Civilization And Culture Alive Until Earth Could Be Reverse-colonized From Mars.

The Universe Is Not A Collection Of Objects, But Is An Inseparable Web Of Vibrating Energy Patterns In Which No One Component Has Reality Independently From The Entirety. Included In The Entirety Is The Observer.

It May Seem Bizarre, But In My Opinion Science Offers A Surer Path To God Than Religion.

The Laws Of Physics ... Seem To Be The Product Of Exceedingly Ingenious Design... The Universe Must Have A Purpose.

Through Conscious Beings The Universe Has Generated Self-awareness. This Can Be No Trivial Detail, No Minor Byproduct Of Mindless, Purposeless Forces. We Are Truly Meant To Be Here.

Cancer Touches Every Family In One Way Or Another. As Other Diseases Are Brought Under Control, Cancer Is Set To Become The Number One Killer, And Is Already In Epidemic Proportions Worldwide.

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In 1911 The Little Town Of Nakhla In Egypt Was The Scene Of One Of The Most Remarkable Events In Historym When A Chunk Of Rock Fell From The Sky And Killed A Dog. This Is The Only Known Canine Fatality Caused By A Cosmic Object. Improbably Though This Encounter Was Already, Its Truly Extraordinary Nature Was Revealed Only Decades Later When Scientists Found That The Culprit Was Not A Common-or-garden Meteorite, But A Piece Of The Planet Mars.

I Should Say We Know That There Are Many, Many Other Earths Out There. We're Almost Certain That There Will Be Upwards Of A Billion Earth-like Planets In Our Galaxy Alone, So There Is No Lack Of Real Estate Where Life Might Happen, But What We Don't Know Is How Likely It Is Given The Real Estate, Given A Wonderful Pristine Planet Like Earth How Likely Is It That Life Will Pop Up Inhabited? We Don't Know The Answer To That.

What We Want Is Another Sample Of Life, Which Is Not On Our Tree Of Life At All. All Life That We've Studied So Far On Earth Belongs To The Same Tree. We Share Genes With Mushrooms And Oak Trees And Fish And Bacteria That Live In Volcanic Vents And So On That It's All The Same Life Descended From A Common Origin. What We Want Is A Second Tree Of Life. We Want Alien Life, Alien Not Necessarily In The Sense Of Having Come From Space, But Alien In The Sense Of Belonging To A Different Tree Altogether. That Is What We're Looking For, "life 2.0."

The Vast Majority Of Terrestrial Species Are In Fact Microbes, And Scientists Have Only Begun Scratching The Surface Of The Microbial Realm. It Is Entirely Possible That Examples Of Life As We Don't Know It Have So Far Been Overlooked.

Astronauts Have Been Stuck In Low-earth Orbit, Boldly Going Nowhere. American Attempts To Kick-start A New Phase Of Lunar Exploration Have Stalled Amid The Realisation That Nasa's Budget Is Too Small For The Job.

In Spite Of The Fact That Religion Looks Backward To Revealed Truth While Science Looks Forward To New Vistas And Discoveries, Both Activities Produce A Sense Of Awe And A Curious Mixture Of Humility And Arrogance In Their Practitioners. All Great Scientists Are Inspired By The Subtlety And Beauty Of The Natural World That They Are Seeking To Understand. Each New Subatomic Particle, Every Unexpected Object, Produces Delight And Wonderment. In Constructing Their Theories, Physicists Are Frequently Guided By Arcane Concepts Of Elegance In The Belief That The Universe Is Intrinsically Beautiful.

The Development Of Artificial Intelligence May Well Imply That Man Will Relinquish His Intellectual Supremacy In Favor Of Thinking Machines. With Oceans Of Time Available For Future Innovation, There Seems To Be No Reason Why Machines Cannot Achieve And Surpass Anything Of Which The Human Brain Is Capable.

No Planet Is More Earth-like Than Earth Itself, So If Life Really Does Pop Up Readily In Earth-like Conditions, Then Surely It Should Have Arisen Many Times Right Here On Our Home Planet? And How Do We Know It Didn't? The Truth Is, Nobody Has Looked.

Man-made Computers Are Limited In Their Performance By Finite Processing Speed And Memory. So, Too, The Cosmic Computer Is Limited In Power By Its Age And The Finite Speed Of Light.

Should We Find A Second Form Of Life Right Here On Our Doorstep, We Could Be Confident That Life Is A Truly Cosmic Phenomenon. If So, There May Well Be Sentient Beings Somewhere In The Galaxy Wondering, As Do We, If They Are Not Alone In The Universe.

For Millennia Mankind Has Believed That Nothing Can Come Out Of Nothing. Today We Can Argue That Everything Has Come Out Of Nothing. Nobody Has To Pay For The Universe. It Is The Ultimate Free Lunch.

Although Gravity Is By Far The Weakest Force Of Nature, Its Insidious And Cumulative Action Serves To Determine The Ultimate Fate Not Only Of Individual Astronomical Objects But Of The Entire Cosmos. The Same Remorseless Attraction That Crushes A Star Operates On A Much Grander Scale On The Universe As A Whole.

Clearly, Some Creative Thinking Is Badly Needed If Humans Are To Have A Future Beyond Earth. Returning To The Moon May Be Worthy And Attainable, But It Fails To Capture The Public's Imagination. What Does Get People Excited Is The Prospect Of A Mission To Mars.

When I Was A Student, The Laws Of Physics Were Regarded As Completely Off Limits. The Job Of The Scientist, We Were Told, Is To Discover The Laws And Apply Them, Not Inquire Into Their Provenance.

The Question Not Many Ask Is: Why Are The Laws Of Physics Like They Are?

Laws Of Physics

Imagine A Civilisation That's Way In Advance Of Us Wants To Communicate With Us, And Assist Us In Our Development. The Information We Provide To Them Must Reflect Our Highest Aspirations And Ideals, And Not Just Be Some Crazy Person's Bizarre Politics Or Religion.

The Goldilocks Enigma Is The Idea That Everything In The Universe Is Just Right For Life, Like The Porridge In The Fairy Tale.

There Is For Me Powerful Evidence That There Is Something Going On Behind It All. . . It Seems As Though Somebody Has Fine Tuned Nature's Numbers To Make The Universe. . . The Impression Of Design Is Overwhelming.

If There Is A God

The Universe Contains Vastly More Order Than Earth-life Could Ever Demand. All Those Distant Galaxies, Irrelevant For Our Existence, Seem As Equally Well Ordered As Our Own.

Is There Anything Science Should Not Try To Explain? Science Is Knowledge And Knowledge Is Power - Power To Do Good Or Evil. Sometimes Ignorance Is Bliss.

Knowledge And Power

The Secret Of Our Success On Planet Earth Is Space. Lots Of It. Our Solar System Is A Tiny Island Of Activity In An Ocean Of Emptiness.

In The 1990s I Began To Study The Prospects That Life Could Spread From Mars To Earth Or Maybe Earth To Mars And That Maybe Life Began On Mars And Came To Earth, And That Idea Seemed To Have A Lot Of Traction And Is Now Accepted As Very Plausible.

For Me, Science Is Already Fantastical Enough. Unlocking The Secrets Of Nature With Fundamental Physics Or Cosmology Or Astrobiology Leads You Into A Wonderland Compared With Which Beliefs In Things Like Alien Abductions Pale Into Insignificance.

Science Is About Explaining The World, And Religion Is About Interpreting It. There Shouldn't Be Any Conflict.

Even If We Don't Have A Precise Idea Of Exactly What Took Place At The Beginning, We Can At Least See That The Origin Of The Universe From Nothing Need Not Be Unlawful Or Unnatural Or Unscientific.

Science Can Proceed Only If The Scientist Adopts An Essentially Theological Worldview. ..even The Most Atheistic Scientist Accepts As An Act Of Faith The Existence Of A Law-like Order In Nature That Is At Least In Part Comprehensible To Us.

Most Research Into Life's Murky Origin Has Been Carried Out By Chemists. They've Tried A Variety Of Approaches In Their Attempts To Recreate The First Steps On The Road To Life, But Little Progress Has Been Made. Perhaps That Is No Surprise, Given Life's Stupendous Complexity.

Scientists Have No Agreed Theory Of The Origin Of Life - Plenty Of Scenarios, Conjectures And Just-so Stories, But Nothing With Solid Experimental Support.

Technology Is, In The Broadest Sense, Mind Or Intelligence Or Purpose Blending With Nature.

My Feeling Is That Scientific Method Has The Power To Account For And Interlink All Phenomena In The Universe, Including Its Origin, Using The Laws Of Nature. But That Still Leaves The Laws Unexplained.

Scientific Method

When I Was A Student Almost Nobody Thought There Was Any Life Beyond Earth. Today It's Fashionable To Say That There Is Life All Over The Place, That The Universe Is Teeming With It, But The Scientific Facts On The Ground Haven't Really Changed.

We Might Expect Intelligent Life And Technological Communities To Have Emerged In The Universe Billions Of Years Ago. Given That Human Society Is Only A Few Thousand Years Old, And That Human Technological Society Is Mere Centuries Old, The Nature Of A Community With Millions Or Even Billions Of Years Of Technological And Social Progress Cannot Even Be Imagined. ... What Would We Make Of A Billion-year-old Technological Community?

Cancer Cells Come Pre-programmed To Execute A Well-defined Cascade Of Changes, Seemingly Designed To Facilitate Both Their Enhanced Survival And Their Dissemination Through The Bloodstream. There Is Even An Air Of Conspiracy In The Way That Tumours Use Chemical Signals To Create Cancer-friendly Niches In Remote Organs.

It's Only Fashion That Has Said The Pendulum Has Swung From Extreme Skepticism About Extraterrestrial Life To Extreme Credulity. The Truth Is Somewhere In Between.

We Know That Within The Solar System Is Very Unlikely There Will Be Anything More Advanced Than Microbial Life, But If We Think Outside The Solar System And Then, The Distances Are, Of Course, Immense, Then There Could Be Earth-like Planets With More Advanced Form Of Life.

It Is Possible That A Scientific Discovery Will Be Made That Humans Will Later Regret Because It Has Awful Consequences. The Problem Is, We Probably Would Not Know In Advance And, Once The Discovery Is Made, It Cannot Be Undiscovered.

Wheeler Hopes That We Can Discover, Within The Context Of Physics, A Principle That Will Enable The Universe To Come Into Existence "of Its Own Accord." In His Search For Such A Theory, He Remarks: "no Guiding Principle Would Seem More Powerful Than The Requirement That It Should Provide The Universe With A Way To Come Into Being." Wheeler Likened This 'self-causing' Universe To A Self-excited Circuit In Electronics.

Guiding Principles

Things Changed With The Discovery Of Neutron Stars And Black Holes - Objects With Gravitational Fields So Intense That Dramatic Space And Time-warping Effects Occur.

The Birth Of Science As We Know It Arguably Began With Isaac Newton's Formulation Of The Laws Of Gravitation And Motion. It Is No Exaggeration To Say That Physics Was Reborn In The Early 20th-century With The Twin Revolutions Of Quantum Mechanics And The Theory Of Relativity.

Cancer Is Such A Ruthless Adversary Because It Behaves As If It Has Its Own Fiendishly Cunning Agenda.

"are We Alone In The Universe?" This Is A Question Which Goes Back To The Dawn Of History, But For Most Of Human History It Has Been In The Province Of Religion And Philosophy. Fifty Or Something Years Ago, However, It Became Part Of Science.

General Relativity Is The Cornerstone Of Cosmology And Astrophysics. It Has Also Provided The Conceptual Basis For String Theory And Other Attempts To Unify All The Forces Of Nature In Terms Of Geometrical Structures.

If We're Thinking About Old Civilizations, Those That Formed A Long Time Ago And There Were Stars And Planets Around Long Before Earth Even Existed, Then These Are Going To Be Towards The Center Of The Galaxy. That Is The Place To Look If You Think There Are Ancient Civilizations That Have Made Beacons Or Some Other Way Of Attracting Our Attention.

Science May Explain The World, But We Still Have To Explain Science. The Laws Which Enable The Universe To Come Into Being Spontaneously Seem Themselves To Be The Product Of Exceedingly Ingenious Design. If Physics Is The Product Of Design, The Universe Must Have A Purpose, And The Evidence Of Modern Physics Suggests Strongly To Me That The Purpose Includes Us

The Thing About Lucid Dreams Is That It's Not Like The Real World Where You Are Constrained By All Sorts Of Things, Including The Laws Of Physics - You Can Do Magic.

I Suppose My Interest In Looking For Life Elsewhere In The Universe Really Dates Back To My Teens. What Teenager Doesn't Look Up At The Sky At Night And Think Am I Alone In The Universe? Well Most People Get Over It, But I Never Did And Though I Made A Career More In Physics And Cosmology Than Astrobiology I've Always Had A Soft Spot For The Subject Of Life Because It Does Seem So Mysterious.

Mathematics Is Universal. It's Discovered By Human Beings, But The Rules Of Mathematics Are The Same Throughout The Universe And The Laws Of The Universe.

We Will Never Fully Explain The World By Appealing To Something Outside It That Must Simply Be Accepted On Faith, Be It An Unexplained God Or An Unexplained Set Of Mathematical Laws.

If We're Looking For Intelligence In The Universe I Think Everybody Assumes That This Has To Start With Life And So The Question Is: "how Likely Is It That There Will Be Life Elsewhere In The Universe?"

Ultimate Questions Will Always Lie Beyond The Scope Of Empirical Science As It Is.

Ultimate Questions

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