Life Could Have Evolved 15 Million Years After the Big Bang, Says Cosmologist

KentuckyFC writes "Goldilocks zones are regions around stars that are 'just right' for liquid water and for the chemistry of life as we know it. Now one cosmologist points out that the universe must have been through a Goldilocks epoch, a period in which warm, watery conditions could have existed on almost any planet in the entire cosmos. The key phenomenon here is the cosmic background radiation, the afterglow of the Big Bang which was blazing hot when it first formed. But as the universe expanded, the wavelength of this radiation increased, lowering its energy. Today, it is an icy 3 Kelvin. But somewhere along the way, it must have been between 273 and 300 Kelvin, just right to keep water in liquid form. According to the new calculations, this Goldilocks epoch would have occurred when the universe was about 15 million years old and would have lasted for several million years. And since the first stars had a lifespan of only 3 million years or so, that allows plenty of time for the heavy elements to have formed which are necessary for planet formation and the chemistry of life. Indeed, if live did evolve a this time, it would have predated life on Earth by about 10 billion years."

Comments

Millions of years of life-supporting conditions

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if that was long enough to produce lush gardens with apple trees.

Re:Millions of years of life-supporting conditions

[symbolset]

The roads were a lot shorter back then.

Re:Millions of years of life-supporting conditions

[EdIII]

That's a good point. It would have been the easiest time period to traverse the distances between the stars, and increases the chances that two different species would be interacting. Anytime you do that, it becomes possible for a Kirk-like explorer to go out an tap that which has not been tapped. This pleases me.

Thanks.

Re:Millions of years of life-supporting conditions

[jd2112]

How could humanoids remain a dominant configuration through billions of years of evolution as depicted in TNG? Seems like various forms would have plenty of time to develop multiple eyeballs etc. Humans are unique among primates in our upright stance, as opposed to the quadrupedal gait found in other primates. Was that supposed to have been baked into the cake in the TNG universe too, or was it considered an inevitable part of developing sapience?

I always thought Ursula LeGuin's Hainish Universe was a more sensible/plausible premise, where one species seeds itself throughout the local area of the galaxy in various ways in the past few million years - combining its DNA with that of local primates on Earth, for instance, thus humanity's aggressive streak as compared with other intelligent species.

If I remember correctly, the predominance of humanoid species in Star Trek was due to the low number of non-humanoid actors in the Screen Actors Guild.

Re:Millions of years of life-supporting conditions

[swillden]

If I remember correctly, the predominance of humanoid species in Star Trek was due to the low number of non-humanoid actors in the Screen Actors Guild.

Damned unions.

ah yes, a time when

[Bramlet Abercrombie]

His vast Noodly Appendeges still bathed the entire cosmos is a fine tomato based sauce.

Duh....

[Lumpy]

Everyone knows the Time Lords are one of the first races of the galaxy.

Re:All I know

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

We just killed a 500 year old clam. Now you want to kill a 5 billion year old microbe? Just for the fun of studying it? Whats wrong with you?

Re:Just my opinion

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I found this in Panda's Thumb:

I don’t know about you evilutionists. But to me, these stalactites and stalagmites look very much designed. Only dogmatic Darwin worshipers could be dumb enough to believe that these stalactites and stalagmites would know where to start growing so that eventually meet at a point, conjoin, become a pillar and hold the roof of the cave up.

There is symmetry in the formations, symmetry means information, symmetry means reduction in disorder, reduction in disorder is reduction in entropy and entropy can not be reduced by random naturalistic mechanistic processes. If these formations are “natural” then they violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The pathetic inability of the theory of evolution to account for the cave formations completely disproves any credibility the Big Bang Theory might have. It stretches the credulity of the American Public, 62% of whom don’t believe evolution anyway, that these scientists would confidently see amino acids and methane in planets and moons in the sky, when they cant see that mud-to-stalactite evolution is impossible.

Re:So Space Whales?

[roc97007]

Hmm,- what if you had a large enough concentration of water (and other stuff, like rocks) that it remained liquid under its own gravity, hence, no steam?

I think that's called a planet.