Slashdot Mirror
Milky Way Star Births May Have Influenced Life
eldavojohn writes "Space.com has an interesting article that speculates that the period when our galaxy was giving birth to stars resulted in huge fluctuations and impact on earth. From the article, 'Some 2.4 billion years ago when the Milky Way started upping its star production, cosmic rays — high-speed atomic particles — started pouring onto our planet, causing instability within the living. Populations of bacteria and algae repeatedly soared and crashed in the oceans.' Causes one to wonder what the probability for life arising on a planet is given that our own seemed to be in a very unique situation on many different counts."
Freedom is a state of mind. A mind is a state of being. Stay the fuck out of my mind and my being. - Corporate Avenger
'Some 2.4 billion years ago when the Milky Way started upping its star production, cosmic rays -- high-speed atomic particles -- started pouring onto our planet [...]' Causes one to wonder what the probability for life arising on a planet is given that our own seemed to be in a very unique situation on many different counts."
While Earth does seem to be unique amongst the hundred or so planets that we're aware of, the above circumstance is not one of the reasons. Those cosmic rays would have been pouring onto every planet in the galaxy, or at least this corner of it. If that cosmic ray flux did have an effect on jump starting the primitive life that was around at the time, it may have done so on tens of thousands of planets.
It may also have wiped out the local equivalent of the dinosaurs - or even intelligent species - on some other planets.
-- Alastair
Most people will agree that humans are still special even if we find an advanced civilization outside our solar system. However, the majority of Christians (and other religions) believe we were placed here by a supreme being in his likeness and the whole universe is ours and ours alone. The idea of another race of beings on another planet would basically shatter the definition of life created by the church.
I think that most Christians (and other religions) could accept the concept of life beyond Earth without having their faith completely shattered. Hell, the Catholic Church is more or less accepting of evolution as a concept (though "guided" by God as they say). The Fundies might have a problem with it, but then, what don't they have a problem with?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
All these stars were a long, long way away.
The amount of radiation (any sort) falling on a body decreases in an inverse square manner, so I doubt that even in the maddest periods of star formation there would have been more than a tiny effect on our atmosphere, especially compared with the effects of a cosmic ray emmitter only 8 light-minutes away that may also have been fluctuating wildly.
In short, I'm sceptical.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
It's important to note that it doesn't say what God did on days eight through infinity. There's no reason he couldn't have made other planets, other peoples.
By the same token, the bible never even addresses the issue of evolution, so people who are using it as a basis for believing or not believing in evolution are a bunch of chumps. But then, everyone who is not a fundamentalist fanatic pretty much does their best to ignore them.
As I am fond of saying to various wingnuts, a god who can't set up evolution to achieve a desired end is not omnipotent.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The worst of the fundies take a very old document from a time when metaphor was often used and interpret it both very literally AND very selectively. (eg gays are bad but wearing blended clothes is ok and they don't keep Kosher*. That's the same old testament! ) And they choose to very literally interpret the English translation, no matter what the original probably said. In a country which is really not that literate I can see how this happens - religion is about your pastor, not about the book.
But not everyone who's religious is like that. It's perfectly reasonable to think that G-d guided each step of evolution - evolution isn't incompatible with G-d at all. But I think this doesn't give your G-d enough credit...
Which do you think shows more omnipotence: Building a car that G-d has to tuneup every 100 miles, or building a car that drives forever and constantly improves itself on the fly to be better for existing road conditions.
Evolution does not logically require a god. But to me the wonderful elegance of evolution - and indeed of most science once humankind actually understands the topic fairly well - is closer to be proof OF G-d than a refutation of him/her.
My personal feeling is that if someone can't understand how I can have this position (even if they disagree), they need to take more math and science classes.
Computers are really built on just a couple SIMPLE elements - transitors. But millions of these SAME elements working together in a particular way gives us the computer I'm typing this on, Google, and Wikipedia. There is a wonderful elegance to this extreme complexity being built from the extreme simplicity of the evolutionary process.
Alchemy was really hard. With chemistry we can do much more... and we realize that all things we're familiar with are made up only of protons, neutrons and electrons. (and those of quarks - and yes there are less-common particles and radiation)
When you get down to basics, there's only a very few times numbers we need that aren't integers... All around, it's extremely elegant.
*and Kosher food is often healthier than "normal" food, in the same general way that Organic is - there are rules about icky things you aren't allowed to do prepping them.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot