Does Life And Our World Have A Purpose?

Purpose of our life our existence? Do we have any significance in this cosmos or we are here accidentally?

Let's take a look at it

The Pale Blue Dot

Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Published: February 5, 2019

Historical Date: February 14, 1990

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun. Did you see the Blue Dot in the photo? that’s our Earth? This is the photograph taken by Voyager 1 when it is about to leave our solar system. I think this is the most profound photograph ever taken by mankind. It shows the earth as Scientist Carl Sagan says A Mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. And there are other deep humbling photos captured by Hubble Space Telescope.

This is a tiny part of the sky every point in this photograph is a Galaxy, not a star not a solar system but a Galaxy each of which has composed of ten and hundred of billions of stars. For comparison, our Milky Way Galaxy is composed of 400 Billons of stars and at least that many planets our sun is one of those billions and we live on one rather small planet orbiting this unremarkable star (Sun) in an unremarkable galaxy in a remote corner of our universe we known of. And we humans are one of at least 9 billion different life forms on the earth. What does it mean for us humans? Are we of any significance or we are nothing more than a burden on this ecosystem already stressed by the insatiable appetite of our increasing needs.

How did all this come to be? How did we get here? And what is the purpose of all this?

At first glimpse of the photo, Voyager 1’s Pale Blue Dot of Earth (Picture on the top of this blog or the first one) seems that we are indeed a speck of dust of no particular cosmic significance. But before making any conclusion let see what we have in front of us, consider the improbability of not only finding ourselves in this universe but the formation of such universe that would have us, as of we know the universe came to be about 13.8 billion years ago in a massive expansion which we call the big bang.

The massive expansion Big Bang from where everything comes into the existence it could have expanded too fast such that no structure such as galaxies, stars, or even atom formed. It could have expended too slow such that it could have re-collapsed into a singularity. But The universe expanded at such a rate that it allowed the expansion to continue at a slow enough rate for atoms and structures to form, and 13.8 billion years later we see the result that we see today.

Roughly 200 million years after the big bang the first star formed. These were relatively massive highly luminous and fast-burning stars made almost purely of hydrogen and helium.

After only a few hundred million years, they burned out and exploded in supernovae explosions. In doing so they seeded the universe with heavier elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur which had formed in the core of these early stars but were expelled into space upon their explosions. The remnants of these explosions formed nebulae. The Nebulae were enriched by many such previously exploded stars. These became nurseries for younger stars which formed from the remnants of earlier ones. One of these newly formed stars having been enriched by prior explosions was our own, our own sun probably formed from such a nebula.

The heavier remnants that were not consumed by the central mass resulting in the formation of planets around their star. There were sufficient quantities of heavy elements that could form several rocky planets. And one such planet is our Earth was such a distance from its star not too far not too close but at a distance from its star that temperature allowed water to form that exist in liquid form, making it convenient for molecules to interact with each other. These were conditions that could lead to the formation of complex chemicals. One such chemical is carbon which happens to be a very versatile atom capable to form bonds with several other atoms allowed for the kind of interaction that resulted in complex chemical molecules.

These interactions of molecules somehow through a process we don’t understand yet, these molecules came together to form a simple self-replicating cell. These cells over a vast time frame of hundreds of millions of years, through a process of chemical and eventually biological evolution resulted in ever more complex life forms driven by natural selection and influenced by the environment, and after billions of years of evolution resulted in the highly sophisticated life forms that we see today.

Condition on earth is not only responsible for life here the celestial body out there on the solar system also helps in the formation of life on earth. If our solar system have not been blessed with a giant planet Jupiter which acted as a vacuum cleaner, it takes millions and billions of small asteroids into itself, if there is no such planet like Jupiter out on the solar system life may not have formed on earth because of the constant bombardment of this asteroids. Similarly, if mars sized protoplanet called Theia not collided with earth about 4 billion years ago, resulting in the formation of our Moon which stabilized earth’s orbit which gives us a predictable season, life as we know it may have been completely different or even non-existent.

Change the circumstances of earth's early history and we would not be here. Change the distance of the earth from the sun or the placement of the heavier planets in the solar system and we would not be here. Change the sun slightly warmer or colder than it is and we would be here. Change the trajectory of one larger asteroid which killed our early ancestors — The Dinosaurs and we would not be here. Change the climate a couple of million years ago on one of the continents called Africa which lead to tree living apes having to adapt to life on the African plains instead and humans never have evolved. Alter the process of natural selection that resulted in highly sophisticated hands, the change in diet or other biological and environmental forces that resulted in larger brains and we humans would not be the super-intelligent creatures that we are today.

All these details do not take into account the fact that the laws of physics and the constants of the universe are such that allow for atoms and larger structures to form the chemistry to take place that sets the stage for life to exist. Anyway you look at it we are sooo… lucky we won the lottery of this universe. You may not be happy in your life, the level poverty on our planet, millions of people could not even effort proper food or shelter, these things might not perfect nor the best for our existence. But the fact that we exist even though for a limited amount of moment, it is not a small thing. No matter how closely we look we have not been able to answer the question of what existed before the big bang it may not even be a good question because time itself starts to have come from the big bang. There are hundreds of billions of stars in galaxies and hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe are we assume that our is the one and only universe that has life. Exoplanet data appear to indicate that most stars have planets orbiting them, if true there are thousands of trillions of planets in the entire universe. We have seen no evidence that intelligent life like us exists elsewhere in the universe. It is possible that life on another planet exists but no such evidence exists.

Given the probability of the formation of life on our own planet of such millions and billions of accurate combinations of events that are responsible for the life on earth so it is possible that we may only the life containing planet on Milky Way and other creatures like us may evolve millions of light-years away from us, so far that we may never learn about them. We have not even detected simple life on any other planets in our solar system.

We May Not Be Unique But Probably Rare

Given the journey of fortunate events that have gone our way for the formation of life, from the location of earth in its orbit around the sun, to the large moon that stabilizes the earth, to the giant asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs, it is a data point indicate that we may indeed be very rare. We are so fortunate enough to win the universe’s lottery which chances are once in the thousands of trillions. For comparison, if the whole area of India represents the total age of earth everything we have known so far is not even equal to a small city.

We not only live in this universe but we are made of the stuff of this universe but what makes us different is that through our senses, our emotions, our brain we can connect to the rest of the cosmos. We can see, feel, and react to our situation. Scientist Carl Sagan said “We are the Custodian’s of life meaning… it’s really up to us.” Does it really matter if we are a speck of dust in the vast space of the universe?

It is completely up to us how we live our life, it’s your choice to living the life to its full end or stuck into every day’s life problem which never going to end. It’s your choice to be happy and experience life. It’s your choice that you are going to waste this life or utilize it in something good. It’s up to us that how we care about nature which is the result of millions and billions of accurate combinations in the form of evolution.

At the end, I would like to recommend you a poem Disorientation by Astrophysicist Katie Mack.