Conditions may hamper creation of intelligent life
hat does it take for life to develop on a planet? What conditions must occur for intelligence to evolve?
The initiation of life, some scientists believe, requires that a planet possess an ocean and tides. The tide cycle fills up shallow depressions above the shoreline that then remain as tide pools when the tide goes out. The chemicals of life become concentrated as tide pools fill up then evaporate, leaving the concentrated chemicals behind. After enough time, some biologists believe, rudimentary lifeforms take hold.
Life began very early in Earth’s history, almost as soon as the planet cooled enough for permanent oceans to exist. Due to that fact, many scientists optimistically feel that life is virtually inevitable on any planet with oceans and volcanoes, which circulate the chemicals into the air and water, both of which are believed to be common.
Necessary conditions for intelligence are elusive, but many anthropologists point to the changing climate in east Africa, the wellspring of the human race, by providing the evolutionary pressure toward intelligence. The necessity to find food during times of climate change that killed off old food sources helped drive us toward greater brain capacity, some say. The need to walk upright once trees began disappearing placed our brain higher, along with our sense organs. And the need to use those sense organs to identify what’s hiding in the grasses may have also driven up hominid brain size. Some even claim the development of an opposable thumb, allowing for the creation of a wide range of tools, pushed our intelligence.
Both the development of life and the evolution of intelligence described here share a common element: land masses. If there’s no land, tides become irrelevant to trigger the genesis of life, because the planet has no tide pools to concentrate necessary chemicals.
Without continents which can move and drastically change the climate, no trees exist for ancient apes to come down from, no savannahs forcing early hominids to search for predators and no opposable thumbs because what creatures would need them under water?
Astronomers announce the discovery of Earthlike planets orbiting other stars regularly. They seem to be quite common. But do they all have landmasses? We always assume so, because Earth does. Mars once had vast oceans, but still sported land rising above the ocean surface. Surely such geography is common among exoplanets.
Dr. Fergus Simpson, of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona, shows that such assumptions about exoplanets may not hold. Continents remain a major hallmark of Earth, even as they drift and collide into or merge with each other.
However, if geological conditions were slightly different on Earth, continents might not exists here. Earth, says Dr. Simpson, may be a very finely balanced planet, where the amount of water is just right for large continents to exist. His statistical models of planetary development reveal that oceans may dominate other habitable worlds, most being 90 percent or more water by surface area.
Without the evolutionary pressure of dry land, it’s likely, he feels, that intelligence might be rare in the universe. This doesn’t mean sea creatures can’t be intelligent, as whales and dolphins are. But could they build machines, computers, telescopes or other implements that mark our intelligence advances?
On May 25, our moon will be as close as it will get to Earth in 2017 — a mere 222,000 miles away. We would call this a “super moon,” except for the fact that it occurs on the night of new moon so we won’t see it. But our moon is the major driver of our tides, so they will be higher than normal around that date.
Who knows, maybe some new life form will come into existence in tide pools due to this super moon.
As May begins, Venus shines brilliantly in the pre-dawn sky. Mercury also rises before the sun, but only by 30 minutes and is all but lost in the morning twilight glow. Mars is low in the west at sunset, but can be glimpsed with a clear western horizon. Jupiter rises two hours before the sun sets and remains visible most of the night, setting only an hour before the sun rises. Saturn hits the horizon at midnight, but by May’s end it is rising less than two hours after sunset, while Jupiter is already halfway up in the east at sunset. Mars is nearly lost in the evening twilight. Mercury climbs a bit higher in the morning twilight while Venus dominates the pre-dawn sky. Full moon occurs on May 10 with the new super moon following on the May 25.
First, some medical background: Blood can be “Rh+” (with the Rhesus protein, named after that found in the blood of Rhesus monkeys) or “Rh-” (without the protein), explains Dan Lewis in his book “Now I Know.” If a pregnant woman is Rh- but the fetus inherits Rh+ from the father, her immune system may actually attack the fetus’s bloodstream — known as Rhesus disease — causing the fetus to be mildly anemic at birth or even to be stillborn.
Enter Australian James Harrison, who as a teen had a lung removed in a procedure requiring major blood transfusions. Afterward he vowed to “repay the favor” and became a blood donor himself. Early on, his blood plasma was shown to contain a rare antibody that could be used for a vaccine against Rhesus disease.
Since 1954, the “man with the golden arm” has donated plasma about 18 times a year, and in 2011, he set a record with his 1,000th donation. Hundreds of thousands of women — including his own daughter — have received the vaccine, and “Harrison’s antibody has been used to treat more than 2 million babies who would otherwise have Rhesus disease.”
Most people will say a coin or two, but amazingly you can drop in at least 10 pennies without spilling a drop, points out Richard Wiseman in his book “101 Bets You Will Always Win.” The secret here is that the water molecules cling firmly together — known as surface tension. The dropped-in pennies merely stretch out the surface of the water as it rises and forms a dome along the rim. But add too many pennies and the surface tension won’t be strong enough to hold, so the water overflows.
But notice that if you add detergent to the water, the surface tension will be much lower and far fewer pennies can be put in the glass before spillage takes place.