Re: Planets and Extinction Events
- From: mralls@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:41:33 -0700
On Sep 19, 9:51 am, sigidu...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
I thought we did know this. I thought Jupiter sized planets were the
easiest to spot, and that we have discovered it's most common for them
to be closer to the sun than is the norm in our system.
Hum. No.
[simplification]
Big, close planet are easier to spot. So, most of the planets we've
spotted so far have been both big and close.
Ah . . . the old "I lost my keys in the alley, but I'm looking in the
street for them because that's the only place with a light post"
issue.
than hot ones. Or maybe they're equally common. Or maybe cold giants
are unusual, and our solar system is a freak, strange as a perfect
bridge hand.
I'm a member of the "The various factors that allowed sentient life to
arise on Earth are really really ridiculously improbable and that's
why we don't see any evidence of other sentient life in the universe"
wing of thought, so I'd probably guess that the last one is correct,
but like you said we'll know in a few years or a decade.
My notes on "Perfect Planet, Clever Species: How Unique Are We?" are
below this post for anyone who is interested. Only the first section
deals with solar and inter-stellar issues for life though.
--
Mike Ralls
Perfect Planet, Clever Species: How Unique Are We?
Ah . . . a nice little book about something simple, like how and why
humanity exists and if we are alone in the Universe. You know, I think
the question, "Are we the only intelligent life in the Universe?" is
only second in importance to, "Is there life after death?" Personally
I don't expect to find out the either in my lifetime though.
Burger, William C. Perfect Planet, Clever Species: How Unique Are We?
New York: Prometheus Books, 2003.
I got this book from Marylhurst University Shoen Library.
Wrote down notes on Tuesday, October 21st 2004 but I read it a lot
earlier. The chief purpose of this book is to argue how unlikely the
development of intelligent scientific-industrial life is.
17. 95% of the stars in our galaxy are smaller than the sun. Majority
class M red dwarfs. Hard to get liquid water planet around M-dwarf.
Also being close may lock a planet in revolution so that one side
bakes and the other freezes.
18. We're 28,000 light-years from the center of galaxy, about halfway.
The hyperactive center has a lot of deadly radiation from frequent
supernova explosions.
19. Heavier elements needed for life. Common in center of galaxy but
rare among older stars. Life needs rare mix. "rich in metallicity and
graced with a flock of rocky planets and icy comets."
21. Our sun has 350 to 470 carbon atoms per million hydrogen atoms.
Average in nearby stars is estimated at about 225. We originated in a
region especially rich in heavier elements.
23. Supernovas can enrich solar systems with the heavier elements that
are rare in the Universe. Armad Delsemme says we were helped by, "at
least four different stars. A star rich in carbon. A star rich in
oxygen, a star rich in magnesium and silicon, and a star rich in
iron."
24. Our sun is yellowish G class. That type is about 5% of stars in
our galaxy. Minor cycles like sun spots in such stars, but they are
very constant in terms of how much energy they put out. 60% of suns
like ours are also binary pairs or triplets. Binary stars seem
unlikely to have planets because nearby material would be swept up.
26. Doppler effect: approaching train whistle changes pitch as it
approaches and passes us.
28. Hypotheses that stable inner planets need distant large Jupiter-
like planets. Close Jupiter would suck them up or sent them flying
into place.
32. In our solar system estimates of where water will remain liquid on
a planet's surface "range from a minimum of 88 million miles to a
maximum of 127 million miles."
33. Sun like stars grow warmer as they age, so habitable zone would
change and early life on close planet could go extinct.
33. Jupiter also useful to suck up comets and keep Earth from getting
whacked all the time.
46. 1926, Wagener's theory of continental drift was declared outside
the realm of acceptable scientific discourse.
48. No one knows why, but the Earth's magnetic field reverses every
once in a while. Last reverse was 780,000 years ago.
50. "Without plate tectonics we'd all be fish" If earth were smooth
the earth would be 8,800 feet under water.
52. "Had our planet been covered with far larger land areas, it would
be mostly desert." 3/4ths water provides humidity and cloud cover for
the other 1/4th.
56. "We have been extraordinarily lucky. Earth has a fine location
relative to the Sun, a zesty spin with a bit of a tilt to spread
annual weather patterns around, a dynamic two-tiered surface, and lots
of liquid water. Two lucky accidents in the Earth's early history may
have played important roles in making the Earth so hospitable.
Collision with the proto-Moon allowed for an entirely new atmosphere
to form, gave us greater mass, a quick spin, and a stabilizing
companion. Later collisions with abundant commentary material brought
us an additional dose of life-sustaining water. Only on such a stage
could the panorama of life achieve an exuberance of bacterial
diversity, of coral reefs teeming with fish, of the majesty and
diversity of rain forests, and of a species contemplating the stars.
We're not just talking Goldilocks' orbit here; we've got the
Goldilocks planet. Our gravity, spin, crust, atmosphere, and water are
all "just right." "
72. "Replication of DNA produces about three errors per 100,000 base
pairs. However, replication is followed by "proofreading enzymes" that
can clip out most errors, and the error rate drops to about one error
in 1,000 million base pairs."
73. One gene-one function is a common error. Too interconnected for
that.
76. Life really similar to it. "If it works don't fix it!" Human gene
can still talk to the bacterial machinery to make insulin. Lot of
changes but the two still work together when told to.
79. " . . . the universality of sex implies that it is profoundly
significant. Long-term survival appears to be impossible unless a
species' genetic heritage is kept in dynamic flux."
97. Permo-Triassic extinction: "90 percent of the species, half of the
genera, and a third of the families of marine animals were wiped out
during this transition. Among terrestrial vertebrates, 75 percent of
families became extinct." Volcanism may have been the cause but not
sure.
112. Most *species* live on land. But life at sea has 35 animal phyla
to the ten animal phyla on land.
124. 2 species of lice, one for head and one for crotch.
125. Some geographically isolated life are still interfertile over
millions of years. English Oak and American white oaks were separated
for more then 20 million years but still produced fertile hybrids.
130. Human genus has only one living species (Homo sapiens), our
family is the great apes, within the primate order of monkeys and
their relatives, which belong to the class of Mammalia, in the sub-
phylum Vertebrate of the phylum Choradata.
132. One theory has evolution happened rapidly between long periods of
status. One long and slow. (Cladistics and punctuated equilibrium).
134. Virus allow nutrias in hosts to be recycled more rapidly. Biomass
and species numbers plummet in a super-clean experiment.
142. Bacteria in extreme environments probably took hundreds of
millions of years to evolve to work there. Unlikely they originated in
such environments.
148. Interesting co-evolution: Acacia cornigera has ants that sting
you if you grab a twig from this small tree. Ants also girdle stems of
vines of nearby plants, allowing the acacia more access to light. Ants
get protein bodies and special nectar. Energy intensive though.
148. What can biologists say about the nature of God? J.B.S. Haldane,
"An inordinate fondness for beetles."
160. Island species are very vulnerable to extinction. Arms race most
intense and prolonged on largest continuous land surfaces.
162. The smartest animals of the sea, whales, dolphins, and seals are
all mammals descended from the land. "Birds and mammals reached higher
levels of relative brain volume - early in their histories and
independently - while amphibians and reptiles advanced little beyond
their aquatic predecessors."
164. Mammals remained at about same level of brain volume for their
first 150 million years. Excepting primates, only 50 million years ago
did significant level of brain enlargement become apparent.
168. "With forward-pointing eyes, primates reduced their lateral
vision. Thus it became important to travel in small groups where extra
pairs of eyes could survey all directions for danger."
169. Swinging from branch to branch in trees is called "brachiating."
175. "The high speed analysis of returning echoes by a flying bat is
an awesome computational feat, thanks to a "computer" no bigger than a
pea."
181. Unlike other mammals, humans can't breathe and swallow at the
same time. Enlarged larynx and upright posture make it easier for food
to become lodged in the windpipe. In US over 1000 die each year from
getting food in their throat. Price we pay for speech.
181. One year old speaks three to five words, two year old about
fifty, the three-year-old about a thousand; by five, grammar and
comprehension are well developed.
187. In the third world death from child-birth during a woman's
lifetime is between 1 in 25 to 1 in 50. Peter Ellision, "The ninety-
six hours or so following the onset of parturition [birthing]
constitute the greatest single period of mortality risk the typical
human will ever face."
187. Saying proto-humans weren't big hunters ignores the importance of
animal protein and fat in human development and minimizes difficulty
of satisfying our protein requirements with preagricultural plant
diet."
189. "Being smarter is ultimately based on having more neurons, more
dendrites, and lots more interconnections."
190. "Lots of neurons and even more connections develop in the young
brain. Some of these are actively used by the developing child, and
some are not. Those that are actively used grow and develop new
interconnections. Neurons receiving little use begin to atrophy,
making room for those that survive and proliferate. In this way the
brain, in effect, build itself."
201. "Contemporary people in sub-Saharan Africa exhibit more diversity
their DNA than all the rest of humanity put together."
204. "While the great majority (about 85 percent) of human genetic
variation can be found within local populations, about 10 percent of
human genetic variation reflects the differences between the major
geographical elements in the human family."
205. "Considering how completely interfertile humans from all corners
of the globe are today, it seems likely that early gracile sapiens
people and contemporary heavier built, culturally less versatile
erectus, archaic sapiens, or Neanderthal people were all interfertile
as well."
206. Point against climate change as push for increased intelligence:
Why didn't other animals get smarter?
206. "He points out that the glacial periods average 80,000 to 100,000
years in length, while the warmer interglacials run between 10,000 and
20,00 years. Most species must adapt to longer and cooler periods, he
reasons, and their problem is to survive the short interglacials."
209. 1st stone tool kit is called Oldowan and was widespread from 2.6
M to 1.6 M years ago. After that came more complex Acheulean stone
tech which lasted another M years. Brain increased continuously over
this time, but without any clear increase when new tool assemblage
came into use.
212. Talks about how intergroup warfare is almost never mentioned as a
source of evolution.
213. "In the period 1970-1978, Jane Goodall and her associates
documented the extermination and displacement of one chimpanzee troop
as a "conquering group" expanding its territory. Similar observations,
over several decades and in different geographic areas, have
documented territorial disputes between small groups of chimps similar
to such conflicts in other social animals, and they are often deadly.
In such conflicts territories may shift in time and over space, and
boundaries may not be clearly defined."
215. The Asmat people of New Guinea refer to members of other groups
as "the edible ones." The Mundurcu head hunters of Amazonia call
outsiders "fair game."
215. Strong human need to identify with a special tribe.
215. A band of groups splintered off. Soon they were identified as
foreign and were shunned and hostilities developed. After 3 years it
became deadly warfare.
217. "Except for parasites and pathogens, other groups of human being
have always been the most dangerous elements of our environment,
regardless of the climate or the continent."
217. Warfare prods language. "Any group whose members can communicate
more rapidly and more precisely becomes a more effective fighting
unit. Because this competition is between groups of the same species,
it allows for the spread of superior mental, organizational, or
technological traits throughout the species. Females are usually
spared in such conflicts, producing additional offspring for the
victors."
218. Males mostly do the fighting and killing from riots to wars.
"Whether at war or in peace, ethnocentrisms couples with a very
negative stereotypes of outgroups is characteristic of all human
societies, large and small."
219. "Somalia is the only nation in sub-Saharan Africa with a single
language and a single religion. Without color, language, or religion
to distinguish each other, Somali conflicts are based on clan
affiliation, and clans are defined by kinship." Inter-clan warfare has
large genetic component. ME: Also the unity of Somalia argues against
the artificial boundaries of Africa being the cause of its problems.
219. Key point, "My argument here is that humans got really smart
because we invented troubles for each other that nature did not
provide for other species. By constant intergroup or interclan
warfare, we created a unique evolutionary arms race and escalating
feedback loop within our own species."
220. "By hunting animals we gained a richer diet. And then - by
hunting each other - we built a bigger brain."
221. Leo Durocher, baseball manager. "Nice guys finish last!"
223. As h-g's humans were in bands of 20 to 150 individuals. Similar
to troops of baboons.
225. Before 12,500 no archaeological evidence of finely crafted spear
points. By 10,00 years ago, they are found all over the continent of
North America. And the majority of large animals were gone. Animals
survived through previous ice-ages, why not this one? Why did they go
extinct at the END of the glacial period, when virtually no plans were
going extinct and as richer more nutritious vegetation was expanding.
The large animals that survived are the grizzly bear, moose, elk,
caribou, and musk ox.
226. Empty Australia: Humans arrived around 60,000 years ago. By 30K
most large marsupials were gone - giant kangaroos and a rhinoceros
sized Diprotodont. Large flightless birds.
226. Empty Madagascar. Humans arrived around 2,000 years ago. 14
species became extinct. Large and slow-moving, feeding at ground level
in the daytime.
228. "As foraging bands of hunter-gathers, the roles of males and
females have probably been differentiated for many m9illions of years.
Hunting, territorial defense, and physical combat are reasonable
explanations for an overall heavier skeleton, thicker skill, greater
upper-body strength, and generally more violent temperament among
human males. Woman have less robust bones and ligaments than men.
Nowadays women in sports suffer between four and six times as many
anterior cruciate ligament injuries of the knee as do men. On average,
human males have a gripping-holding strength almost twice that of
females. Males also have a slower heart rate while resting, greater
capacity fore neutralizing lactic acid as it builds up during
strenuous exercise, all characteristics of a more energetic lifestyle.
228. Only gibbons (living as solitary families in treetops) don't have
sexual dimorphism.
Fat in human male about 14% of body weight, for women 27%.
Cost of a full-term pregnancy about 50,000 calories and lactation
estimated to require as much as 1,000 calories a day. Good book on
male-female differences is Eve's Rib: Searching for the Biological
Roots of Sex Differences by Robert Pool.
231.In IQ tests, males generally score twice as many below 55's and
above 145 as females. The average is the same, but males have a
greater variance which translates into more gifted individuals but
also more handicapped individuals.
235. "The grass family provides us with the cereal grains while the
legume family includes the larger and more nutritious "pulses" (beans,
peas, lentils, etc.)." Both also big for grazing animals.
235. "Of the twenty most intensively cultivated plant species, eight
are grasses. The small seeds of wheat, rice, maize, barely, sorghum,
rye, and the millets (all are grasses) helped begin agriculture, and
they continue to energize us. Rich in nutrition, low in moisture
content, small and hard, these tough little grains are eminently
practical. Stored in a dry place, away from vermin, they can be kept
indefinitely."
236. Potato from the highlands of the Andes. Most important foods in
order, wheat, rice, maize then the potato.
236. "Mexico and Central America gave the world maize, tomatoes, grain
amaranths, cacao, avocado, papaya, vanilla, and specific varieties of
chili peppers, squashes, kidney beans, and cotton. The high Andes are
the original home of root crops such as potatoes, oca, ulluca quinoa
(a grain like seed) and lima beans. From lower elevations, South
America gave us cassava (manioc), sweet potatoes, peanuts, pineapples,
cashews, tobacco, and important varieties of cotton. Finally, and at a
considerably later time, the lower Mississippi and Ohio valleys of the
United States witnessed the domestication of marsh elder and native
goosefoot, as well as development of new varieties of corn, pumpkins,
and sunflowers. Likewise, there were a number of important areas of
local domestication in the Old World, apart from China and the Middle
East. Africa south of the Sahara gave rise to pearl millet, African
rice, sorghum, cowpeas, indigenous yams, okra, the oil palm, and a
variety of melons. Coffee originated in the high mountains of
Ethiopia. Here also is the exclusive home of teff (the world's
smallest cereal grain), ensete (a banana relative with starchy base),
noog ( an oilseed), and distinctive varieties of sorghum and barley.
Tropical south and Southeast Asia were the original locales for the
domestication or rice, bananas, plantations, mangos, many citrus
fruits, cucumbers, black pepper, eggplant, yams, and many kinds of
beans. New Guinea and the western Pacific gave us coconuts, taro,
breadfruit, wing beans, sago palm, and sugar cane."
237. Some stuff has been domesticated more than once. Pigs (W. Asia
and SE Asia) Kidney beans and Chili peppers in both Mexico and South
America, rice (Several regions of Asia). Cattle (N. Africa, E.
Mediterranean, and India. Dogs several different places.
238. "There is no such thing as a bad food. There are only bad diets!"
238. Today we have ~ 18 Billion chickens, 1.8 B Sheep and goats, 1.3 B
cattle, 900 M pigs. They give us ~ 16% of human caloric intake.
240. "Just how successful those early farmers were is reflected in a
sobering fact: we have not added a single major staple to our food
inventory over the last two thousand years.
248. "Not until the late nineteenth century were the elements of the
scientific and industrial traditions effectively joined as a powerful
strategy for accelerating technological progress."
248. "J.R. McNeill estimates that humankind increased its energy
consumption fivefold in the nineteenth century - and another sixteen
fold in the twentieth." _Something New Under the Sun_ pg 14.
252. European towns increased 10x from 900 to 1350 C.E. "In France
alone, more stone was quarried in this period than in all 3,000 years
of ancient Egypt's history."
253. "Charlemagne, Holy Roman emperor who ruled from 768 to 814, had
mandated that all cathedrals and monasteries establish schools to
educate the clergy, and these became the institution for learning
during a time when cities were in decline and barbarian invasions were
still a threat."
253. William of Conche taught that nature acted as an autonomous
rational entity. Prompted charges of heresy.
253. Spain took Toledo in 1085 and got a major Islamic library.
254. "Christian philosophers, working within a cosmology governed by a
single God, were able to unite the celestial and earthly realms that
Aristotle had viewed as separate."
255. Hippocrates focused on repetitive observation and analysis of
disease. By third century BCE they had impressive herbal pharmacology.
This was passed to Rome to the Byzantium's, to the Islamic world.
255. 1380 - medical schools in Italy could use the bodies of the
executed and unclaimed for use in dissection.
256. Dissection taboo rather big. Romans forbid it even as they
allowed the gladiators and the execution of felons in onstage plays.
"The critical point here is simple: no previous society had created
durable medical institutions in which the careful study of publicly
dissected human cadavers was sanctioned." Leonardo do Vinci dissected
at least 14 corpses before he was denied access to the mortuary. That
Leonardo wanted to do it is significant.
258. Magnetic compass introduced from China in the late 1200's.
260. "Eyewitness accounts by returning Portuguese sailors contradicted
Aristotle and Ptolemy: the tropics were neither torrid deserts nor
uninhabitable. Such a clear refutation of thousand-year-old textual
dogma was no small matter in a culture still inclined to accept
ancient wisdom as infallible."
260. Up to 5th century, Western text preserved mostly as papyrus
rolls. Then came books from sheepskin. "A single two-hundred-page
volume might take a scribe more than four months to copy and require
twenty-five sheepskins; these were costs only the wealthy or major
ecclesiastic centers could afford."
260. Paper-making became known to the Muslim world in 751 CE with the
capture of Samarkand in 751 which contained a paper-making mill. But
not until 1268 was the first paper mill established in Italy.
262. "With Gutenberg's new printing technology, western Europe was
able to create a larger number of books within a century than had been
produced on the entire planet over all previous time. From a
technological perspective this achievement can be epitomized in a
single statistic: Gutenberg's technique was not substantially improved
for another three hundred years."
263. Medicine moved much slower than the other sciences. It took 300
years after the publishment of human anatomy by Vesalius that disease
was subjected to serious scientific analysis. Versus 144 from
Copernicus to Newton.
264. Francesco Redi, 1668. Did a series of tests to show that maggots
would not develop in aging meat if flies were excluded.
"Experimentation had now become the preferred technique for both
confirmation and falsification of hypotheses.
265. Radio waves unknown before 1887.
265. "Alan Cromer argues that the Greek origin of Western science was
a unique and highly contingent event which would have been impossible
within strong Judaic, Christian, or Muslim societies - all dominated
by a powerful clergy. Within a soap-opera theology with a weak
priesthood, and having a rich tradition of public debate, Greece made
science a public examination of the real world, unconstrained by a
religious or bureaucratic elite. This may explain why Muslim science
faltered once the clerics came into power, and why Chinese science
failed to advance."
265. "Between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries the world's most
advanced medicine, astronomy mathematics, and natural philosophy were
being practiced in the Arab-Muslim world, expanded from a Greek,
Hebrew, and Hindu legacy. From the fifth to the fifteenth century, the
world's most advanced technology was practiced in China."
266. Science failed to establish itself in either culture. Gutenberg's
press was forbade by both Muslim and Chinese authorities. The Chinese
had carefully recorded observation of the stars for over a thousand
years, but they never developed a hypothetical system to explain
planetary motions.
266. Seems to be a geographical determinist. Europe divided by
mountain chains such as Pyrenees, Alps, and Balkans. Not bound within
one empire. Lots of useful rivers. Helped political fragmentation.
"Europe would develop the first major civilization not requiring a
large, bureaucratic central government." Ideas suppressed in Italy
could go elsewhere.
267. Papal Revolution. Between 1050 and 1200 a succession of popes and
a few small wars made it so that no longer would bishops or priests be
appointed by emperor, king, or prince. Conflict over investitute.
Harold Berman claims this allowed commercial society to divorce itself
from ecclesiastical law. Also, at about this same time Europe got an
infusion of Roman law. Emperor Justinian's summarized and codified
version of Roman law became available. Berman, "They taught the West
to synthesize cases into rules, rules into principles, principles into
a system. Their method . . . was to determine what particulars have in
common, to see the whole as the interaction of the parts. This was the
prototype of modern western science . . . "
268. Will Durant, "In Islam, as in Judaism, law and religion were one,
every crime was sin, every sin a crime; and jurisprudence was a branch
of theology . . . the papacy did what it could to halt the exhumation
of a code that made religion a function and servant of the state, but
the new [legal] study fed and expressed the bold rationalism and
secularization of the 12th and 13th centuries . . . St. Bernard
complained that the courts of Europe rang with the laws of Justinian
and no longer heard the laws of God."
269. Science as great multiculturalism. "First, Muslim scholars,
deeply appreciative of earlier Greek, Hebrew, and Hindu science and
mathematics, preserved and embellished that legacy. Then Europeans,
eagerly absorbing the earlier traditions, further expanded these
studies with great energy."
270. "Between the years 1000 and 1500, western Europe transformed
itself from a technological backwater to the most advanced and dynamic
culture the world had ever seen."
272. "Consider the improbabilities. We start with a solitary star
having a rocky planet orbiting at just the right distance to maintain
water in its liquid state. This same planet has a nice big moon to
stabilize its axial gravitations. Also, about three-quarters of its
surface is covered by water - the result, in all probability, of
having been pelted by a pack of comets. Add to all this a dynamic
crust, lubricated by all that water, maintaining landmasses ridding
high above deep ocean basins. These unique attributes suggest that
finding another planet as good as ours isn't just difficult; it's
close to impossible."
273. Argues against interstellar colonization. "Unfeasible until we
learn to freeze and unfreeze ourselves or build intelligent robotic
surrogates." Unlikely that planet would be habitable. "What's the
likelihood of your immune system, developed over 300 million years on
our own solitary sphere, being able to deal effectively with a life-
form it had never encountered before?"
274. "Also, there's not much thought spent on the problem of mining
distant planets that have no tectonically concentrated ores, or how
you build new spaceships in acid-laced atmospheres lacking oxygen."
Mentions a lot of out there ideas that have been proposed by
scientists, not sf writers.
274. Frank Drake radio astronomer, "The workings of virology, the
physical laws of energy and the vast interstellar distances make
interstellar colonization unthinkable for all time."
276. 300 Billion stars in our galaxy.
277. " . . . tidal forces within the moons of the giant planets might
generate enough heat to keep water fluid under an icy surface; perhaps
that's what's going on under the surface of Jupiter's moon, Europa.
Such an environment might support bacterial slop in a dark liquid
interior, but it won't give rise to complex life-forms that are hungry
for energy."
280. "No evidence for human beings having become more intelligent over
the last 20,000 years, or that we are getting any smarter today." "In
modern Western societies, large numbers of smart and creative people
are among those with the lowest birth rates; this is negative
selection."
283. We are the cause of the sixth major extinction event in the
history of the planet.
283. World growth peaked at 2.1 percent between 1965 and 1970 and has
been declining ever since.
284. Tetullian of second-century Carthage, "Scourges, pestilence,
famine, earthquakes, and wars are to be regarded as blessings, since
they serve to prune away the luxuriant growth of the human race . . .
"
285. Common pattern in nature where populations overshoot their
carrying capacity and then suffer a population crash.
286. Julian Simon, an economist pointed out that during the last four
hundred years, health is better, violence has decreased, personal
property is greater, and democratic governments are more common. But
the author doesn't think some new invention will salve every problem
that arises. Points out that all but one of the ten major commercial
fishing population is in decline.
287. Disagrees with chorus of criticism over China's severe efforts to
control its expanding population.
289. "The paper of your lottery ticket may be ordinary, the printing
by automated machinery, the purchase no different from tens of
thousands of others, but if it has the numbers that match those of the
million-dollar jackpot drawing, you have something very precious."
290. Talks about Devine Intervention vs. Dumb Luck for all our lucky
breaks. Not just us, but how the Universe operates, "Fred Hoyle
pointed out that the stable resonance level of carbon 12 is a uniquely
significant attribute of our universe; if it differed even slightly,
life based on carbon could not exist."
292. Might be as many as 500 billion other galaxies in the Universe.
500 B galaxies x 300 B stars per Galaxy =
150,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 150 Septillion.
294. Conclusion. "Though lacking the purpose and meaning people find
so satisfying in philosophy and religious experience, the scientific
enterprise has presented us with a hugely awesome firmament. This
grand universe has itself grown more complex and richer with
possibilities over an immense progression of time. In such a universe,
it seems likely that creatures with higher cognitive intelligence,
like shooting starts that suddenly flash across the black vault of
night, come into being from time to time, then quickly fade away,
surviving only as the stardust from which they were created.
We may never know those other twinkling of intelligence, rare and
distant over so vast an expanse of space and time. Yet let us rejoice
that we ourselves, if only for a brief moment, have become one such
flash of cosmic understanding."
FOOTNOTES
295. Darwin rarely used the word evolution. He preferred descent with
modification. Evolution implied some unfolding of an already formed
plan.
301. British version of Murphy's Law is "What can happen, will
happen." American version comes from a U.S. Air Force engineer named
Murphy.
315. Says that both punctuated equilibrium and slow gradual change of
evolution happen.
319. "This is what some are calling a Lamarckian form of cultural
evolution. Lamarck had thought that characteristics acquired during
one's lifetime could affect inheritance; they can't. But cultural
innovations can be transmitted in the way Lamarck had suggested."
321. Book to check out: The Great Human Diasporas by Luigi Cavalli-
Sforza.
323. Robert Bartlett's The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization,
and Cultural Change: 950 - 1350. Richard Tarnas, "The Passion of the
Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View.
324. Nathan Rosenber's How the West Grew Rich: The Economic
Transformation of the Industrial World.
Toby E. Huff's, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and
the West.
Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: Fiver Hundred Years of Western
Cultural Life: 1500 to the Present.
325. Adrian Berry's The Next Fiver Hundred Years: Life in the Coming
Millennium.
328. Good universal review of scientific knowledge, John Gribbin's
Almost Everyone's Guide to Science: The Universe, Life and Everything.
.
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