Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Headphone Cord Container

The audacity of life

I will now provide two times the statements in the room that are very closely linked. How - that you learn at the end of this paper. 1: Nylon stockings for breakfast to eat, tastes awful. No. 2: We are certainly not the only life form in the universe.

Confused? And rightly so. But I promise that two paragraphs later, the matter is resolved. There is no more and no less to the old question of whether we're alone in the universe "or whether there are other life forms. No, I do not (only) the green creatures with antennae on his head, get out of flying saucers. But in general the question of whether life in all its complexity, we can observe on earth (our brain is demonstrably the most complex object that people have ever seen), a unique exception in the dreary cold darkness out there.

Although we will probably never know for sure - the exchange of information in the universe is limited by the speed of light and therefore due to the incredibly huge distances in space far too slowly - we can try for example the probability. On the one hand, the chances for such ideal conditions, as we have on Earth, is rather limited (read more here ). On the other hand, even if the probability, so to grab a 5-star spa hotel as our earth is only 0.0001%, one must remember how incredibly, incredibly there are many stars. A popular saying among astronomers is that already in the known, observable universe, there are more stars than grains of sand on all the beaches on earth. And even if not nearly every star has planets at all, it is among the billions of stars certainly be quite a plethora of favorable constellations.

And if the conditions are acceptable or less, are making life not long in coming. You can see very well in the history of our planet. A billion years after the formation of the Earth, the surface is fairly cool, and the constant bombardment by meteorites stopped slowly. About the same time already created primitive life forms. Life was So, as soon as circumstances allowed reasonably, fairly quickly there and has since not get rid of the blue planet. Where were the so-called extremophile life forms not found it - in boiling hot springs (up to 113 ° C), sulphate of mud holes, underground oil drains, oxygen-free and dark mountain caves or highly concentrated brine. This microbe survived the 1000 times the lethal dose for humans radioactivity by using its DNA completely torn to pieces composed just like a puzzle again. Even in the hostile vacuum of space to survive these comrades here. There are now even bacteria, which - as promised tension closes! - Feed on nylon . And if those are related to gourmets everywhere before our eyes - then can not escape the thought that the chemistry of life is such a way that it takes many forms and adapt to all possible living conditions. And we can also relate only to the carbon-based nukleotidvererbende life as we know it - the sky with respect to other biological concepts are no limits.

Life seems to be quite cheerful, cheeky and also tough. Alone in the universe - what an arrogant idea!

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