Answers to the big questions
Permalink | Author: Ember Dart | Published: 2009-06-29 12:30:00 UTC | Tags: answers creation how life robots truth universe where why
Questions like "Why is the universe made mostly of matter?", "Why are we here?", "Is there a god?", and "Is there life on other planets?" are answered scientifically here.
Why is the universe made mostly of matter? Simply because it had to have matter and antimatter to come out of pure energy. Antimatter, doubtless, is hanging around somewhere, perhaps it's the "dark matter" or locked up in that "dark energy" that scientists are theorising about so much. But the fact remains, if we are here to question it, there must be one type of matter primarily in the same region of space as us. Otherwise we wouldn't be here to ask. If there were matter and antimatter in the universe, one would annihilate the other and we wouldn't have got here.
Why are we here?
This question is quite vague. By "why are we here" I mean, why did humans exist in the first place? Not "why am I living here specifically".
Imagine the early universe. Googolplexes of things bashing into each other at phenomenal rate. One is bound to create an atom of some sort. In a universe of such ridiculous amounts of matter, one somewhere is bound to create something useful. So chances are, one is bound to create life. Now this life may or may not die out almost instantly, so it needs a way to duplicate itself if it's going to survive. It may or may not care, but the important thing is, that if a life form is created during the early time of Earth, only life forms that do reproduce actually get to evolve. And evolution, obviously, is tiny changes in genetic structure, randomly happening. So, only the life that evolves into the "right" kind of life gets to stay reproducing. Granted, other forms of life mutated too, but only the "best" kept its longevity. So random life just happened to appear our of the primordial ooze of the early Earth. It was of course bound to happen somewhere. So up and up went the forms of life that were best suited to surviving. Eventually, humans evolved out of those plants and animals. We discovered machines, and they help us to do what we want. In fact, some believe we are going lower and lower on the evolutionary ladder, because we are getting more and more used to technology helping us along, and become less and less needy of the things we are born with naturally.
Now, so why did we have to be HERE, specifically? Well, we'd be asking that wherever we were, because if we weren't here, we'd be asking the same elsewhere. It's all just a factor of chance.
Is there a god?
Since we've gone this far from randomness alone, and what pretty randomness it is, there is unlikely to be an external force needed, except for whatever the big bang was created out of. People have created imaginary deities in their mind, tried to believe there was a familiar "being" that could not be explained or argued against, and that we were at the centre of the universe, and let others believe this too. This was to stop them from going mad, because if anyone knew the truth about how insignificant we were, or how we didn't matter that much, cosmically speaking, they would, to put it bluntly, not be content,
Are there other forms of life on other planets?
Almost certainly. In the random beginnings of the early universe, there was bound to be more than one life form that evolved. Some believe close planets such as Mars may have contained life at some point, but do not now. In our theory, life as we know it has to have water as one of its important constituent components. But who says all forms of life have to have water? For all we know, planets might be alive. But here, we do not quite know what defines as life. Maybe a different form of life has some of the forms of life as we do and not others. We wouldn't classify it as life. Just as we wouldn't classify robots as life, aliens might do. They reproduce (create other robots), eat (electricity), excrete (fumes), move, and all manner of things that might be attributable to life. Even intelligence is not necessary in life. Just look at plants. We do not think they are particularly intelligent, but if they've survived this long, they must be doing something right. So to me, it's almost a certainty that life exists elsewhere, it's just a matter of us understanding what life is.
Next time, how many dimensions are there? How many universes are there? How far can we perceive?
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