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posted by
janrinok
on Monday March 03 2014, @01:30AM
from the its-life-Jim-but-not-as-we-know-it dept.
from the its-life-Jim-but-not-as-we-know-it dept.
AnonTechie writes:
"What If We Have Completely Misunderstood Our Place in the Universe ? A Harvard astronomer has a provocative hunch about what happened after the Big Bang. Our universe is about 13 billion years old, and for roughly 3.5 billion of those years, life has been wriggling all over our planet. But what was going on in the universe before that time ? It's possible that there was a period shortly after the Big Bang when the entire universe was teeming with life. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb calls this period the 'habitable epoch,' and he believes that its existence changes how humans should understand our place in the cosmos. The full article is here"
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Life On Earth Might Not Be So Special After All
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Ryuugami on Monday March 03 2014, @07:53AM
For an interesting, hard-science-fictional take on this idea, check Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence series of novels. I forget the exact book that had all the details spelled out (maybe another Soylentil will chip in), but I think it was titled "Timelike Infinity" or some such.
Essentially, the idea presented in the book is that the lower the energy level, the slower the life gets. All the way from a few instants after big bang (high-energy, high-speed quark-based life, think nanoseconds as hours or so) to trillions of years in the future (quantum-fluctuation [or something like that] based life warming up around evaporating black holes, a single thought takes thousands of years). For each energy epoch, the one before it seemed to be too hot to support life, and the one after it was considered as a heat death of the universe.
I don't know how realistic that is, but it's an interesting concept to ponder about when talking about abundance of life in the universe, both in time and in space.
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Monday March 03 2014, @12:01PM
Hal Clement had a couple of stories which used this conceit as well --- unfortunately it's a spoiler to name them, but that's okay, all of his stuff is well-worth reading in a classic retro atomic rockets and chemicals kind-of-way.
(Score: 2, Informative) by AsteroidMining on Monday March 03 2014, @03:32PM
The essential scientific paper on this is "Time without end: Physics and biology in an open universe" by Freeman Dyson [harvard.edu] - alas, all I have is a paper copy. This, later, discussion [astrobites.org] between Dyson and Avi Loeb is also very interesting.
(Score: 1) by Woods on Monday March 03 2014, @04:31PM
"Essentially, the idea presented in the book is that the lower the energy level, the slower the life gets. All the way from a few instants after big bang (high-energy, high-speed quark-based life, think nanoseconds as hours or so) to trillions of years in the future (quantum-fluctuation [or something like that] based life warming up around evaporating black holes, a single thought takes thousands of years). For each energy epoch, the one before it seemed to be too hot to support life, and the one after it was considered as a heat death of the universe."
Now THAT is an interesting thought. Wish I could mod up AND post a comment at the same time, but I already commented above. :(
Humans seem to be stuck on the thought that life must be similar to what we know. Carbon based, in the "Habitable zone", humanoid, etc... When really, we have no idea what it could be, or look like, or even how it interacts with the Universe. What if the intelligent life out there has no sense of sight, but instead uses heat to "see"? i.e. thermal vision. And what if the requirements for this species to live is that they be as far as possible from their star?
I am sure there have been thousands of books on the subject, but none immediately come to mind, only Star Trek episodes.