Chapter 8 - A Desginer Universe?

“In at least one world…of the many-worlds universe, life must develop.”

Over the thousands of years that humans have walked the earth, we have evolved quite well to be able to survive in our current conditions. Since we were able to evolve and adapt to this planet shouldn’t we be able to adapt to any planet?

Scientists suggest that we live in a designer universe, meaning that it wasn’t just luck that we ended up on Earth. There are so many “Goldilocks zones” that there is only a small percentage of planets that are in the right “zones” in order to give birth to life.

For example, Earth is just the right distance from the sun. If we were farther from the sun, Earth could become a frozen desert like Mars, and could not harbour life. If we were closer to the Earth, the temperature would jump and so the water in our bodies would boil thus ending any kind of intelligent life. Another “Goldilocks zone” that makes our planet unique is the size of Jupiter. I previously thought that Jupiter, being so far away, wouldn’t have an effect on life, but if Jupiter was smaller, our solar system would actually be full of asteroids, and so these asteroids would plunge into our Earth destroying mankind. (Jupiter cleaned out the asteroids form our solar system 3.5 billion years ago because of its strong gravity.)

So, it’s not coincidental that humans ended up on Earth. Earth just happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right amount of Goldilocks zones. Other factors that are just right include the size of our moon, our distance from the middle of the Milky Way, the amount of oceans, the oxygen content, heat content, and so on.

Because of all these factors, it may very well be possible that we are the only intelligent life in our galaxy or even the universe. There are many factors that must be met in order to harbour life, so the chances of other planets also having all of these factors is very small.

Scientists are now working on a project to catalogue all potential solar systems nearest ours to address the unanswered question: how common, or how rare is our own solar system?