Well your question was life in space, but I imagine you mean life on
another planetary body. Most people would imagine that given enough
time, planetary bodies, favorable conditions and just plain luck that
eventually life would form. Since we have not yet discovered any of
any kind or evidence of any - that is where our first conclusion must
be. There just simple are not any. Biology can support this. I have
come at this question from a few different angles - let me show you.
The first way I'll try to go through is biology. We know what
constitutes life. It is at its most basic level amino acids. In
themselves they are not completly impossible to come up with in a
'sterile' enviroment. I say sterile because that is what it MUST start
as - you have no life and you want time and favorable conditions to
conjure some up. So lets just say for the sake of argument you can get
some amino acids to line up. Next you need to form the shortest DNA
chain capable of being 'smart' enough to make another one just like
it. From what I have read from biologists it is roughly 700
nucleotides in a specific order. It is important to realize that these
acids have no telenomy - they would be just bumping into one another.
Given all odds there is a chance, and it is astronomically small.
Somewhere along the lines of one in a google. A google is a 1 with a
hundred zeros. Impossible yet here we sit. This has given rise to
something known as intelligent design theory. Which states, without
actually giving way to God, that someTHING is helping life along.
Second we have the second law of thermodynamics. You can google it if
you want the exact definition. It says that a system, left to itself,
does not get better with time - it gets worse. Entropy. This planet is
falling apart. It is slowing down - the sun shrinks 5 feet a day and
we are losing the moon at an inch a year. While none of these are
cause for worry they all demonstrate that the universe in which we
live is in decay. Wait! What about all those stars that form and make
new ones and the old ones. Well astronomer are all over about this -
they admit there is not enough interstellar matter in the pre-star
stellar nursery to make star yet that is where they must come from.
Some of you may notice where I am going with this.
The third grade argument always comes to mind - What came first the
chicken or the egg? The DNA or the RNA? Time is not the solution to
this problem - planetary goo given a billion years remains planetary
goo. The second law of thermondynamics is a law for a reason. I will
be the one to say it. We are utterly alone in this universe.
That tired argument that the universe is so big it has just got to
have other civilzations is arguing from a lack of evidence. Occam
would demand that we assume we are alone given the astronomic
likelihood that we are the only life lucky enough to even exist in our
very young universe.
So is there life in space?
No. |
