Chapter 36 - The Universal Law of Life

"Everyone, please tell us what life is? What is the definition of life?" The woman presenter was the first to ask the question. Her name was Hagel and she was an astronomer.

Hearing this question, the various scientists in the audience began to exchange words.

Life, a very amazing thing, is a concept that sounds simple, but is not yet particularly well defined in the scientific community. In some textbooks, life is defined as an object that reproduces and actively takes in energy.

But people seem to prefer to define whether something is life or not, through their own senses. Will it move? One that will actively take in energy? Or will it reproduce?

A car that can take in energy also moves, but it is considered a dead object and does not have the characteristics of life.

An advanced robot, which, according to a program, can automatically take in energy and even reproduce itself, is of course not considered to be life, which is the general view.

"An organic, low-entropy body born out of nature that takes in energy actively and can reproduce itself is, let's call it life. Probably ... narrowly so." This is Oliver's conclusion, and the view of scientists in general.

Well, this definition does not matter much, let's not consider how the condition of "natural born" should be characterized. According to this definition, these Martian viruses should be considered as life, right?

"Yes, a Martian virus would be considered natural life." However, this extraterrestrial life came as a huge shock to scientists ...

During the scientists' continuous discussion, Oliver finally understood what they were talking about, and the main reason, because of the Fermi paradox.

Theoretically, humans can take a million, 10 million or even hundreds of millions of years to fly to the planets of the galaxy, so aliens should have come to the solar system and been observed by humans by now, as long as they evolved ten million or billion years earlier than humans.

Millions and millions of years, this kind of time unit is too long for humans. But put on the scale of the universe is just a moment. The age of the universe, at 13.8 billion years or more!

Therefore, it is entirely possible that aliens who evolved tens of millions or billions of years earlier than humans exist.

However, so far, except for the inexplicable Noah, humans have found almost no traces of aliens.

In other words, the "Fermi paradox" shows the following paradoxes.

1. Extraterrestrials exist - scientific inferences can prove that there are extraterrestrials who evolved much earlier than humans, and their traces should appear in the stars, but they have not been found.

2. Aliens do not exist, or that humans are already the top civilization in the universe.

Now people mostly tend to the first view because - the appearance of the Noah. It must be the crystallization of a super civilization, and the kind with a high degree of technology that has no bounds. It is always impossible that the Noah is born and raised innately ...

Then the question arises, since a higher degree of alien civilization does exist. Why have humans never found traces of alien civilization activity? Why is the universe so empty and cold and silent?

There must be a reason for this!

Now, scientists want to find such a reason.

"There is an explanation that higher alien civilizations do exist, but in such small numbers that we haven't found them."

said moderator Hagel, a middle-aged, white-skinned woman with a pair of black-rimmed glasses, looking very solemn and dignified.

"Of course we have other explanations, such as: alien civilizations deliberately avoid us for some reason and don't let us find them. Or that the universe is a complete dark forest, and the moment two civilizations meet, there will be a war, etc."

"But these reasons are not sufficient ... does not adequately explain that the universe is so empty and cold and silent."

With the current astronomical knowledge, no one thinks that the Earth is any special planet anymore. The sun and the earth, both are just ordinary parts of the vast universe, without any special characteristics.

Therefore, some people began to study, there is no planet similar to the Earth in the galaxy, there is no more suitable for the survival of life environment.

The vast galaxy, about 200 billion stars, planets are countless. Earth-like planets must exist, and the number of quite a few.

One of the more famous ones is the Drake equation, developed by the American astronomer Frank Drake in the 1960s. It can be used to estimate "the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy that may be in contact with us".

The Drake equation was used to calculate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations. According to the calculations, the number of advanced technological civilizations in the galaxy is at least 40 and up to 50 million!

Asimov, a famous American science writer, based on his insights, had proposed a formula similar to the Drake equation and estimated the existence of about 530,000 civilized planets in the Milky Way. That is, for every million stars in the galaxy, there may be an average of 18 highly technological civilized worlds.

"But I think that all these estimates are probably on the small side. Because we have miscalculated the conditions for the birth of life ..." Hagel said seriously.

Sitting on the side, Roman, Thomson and others nodded, obviously, they have discussed this issue with each other many times.

"We all used to think that life was rare. We thought that the conditions for life to be born were very demanding, requiring water, a sufficient atmosphere, the right temperature, etc."

"But to my surprise, there's life on Mars, even though it's just the simplest of viruses! But that's life too!"

"Assuming that life is scarce, what makes the solar system, with two living planets? And we don't know if there is life on Titan and Io or not, maybe there is too?"

"If life is scarce, a chance of several billion to one, what makes the solar system have multiple living planets?"

All the scientists began to think about Hagel's question. This comment also made Oliver ponder, assuming that life in the universe is rare, just like buying a lottery ticket, winning once is very rare, so what makes the solar system win the lottery one after another?

Is it because of good luck? Or was it something else?

After a while, Hagel continued to speak.

"The simplest explanation is that our main premise is wrong. Life is not scarce ... but universal!"

"Life, universally, exists on all planets. Or rather, far more than we think!"

This statement immediately caused a huge stir, even some children subversive, many scientists immediately jumped up in disbelief. Humans have been looking for extraterrestrial life, and as a result, extraterrestrial life turned out to be common, a conclusion that is really not very acceptable.

However, Heigl's counterfactual is brilliant and logical.

Suppose that in the universe, life is rare. So what makes a planet as nook-like and featureless as Mars have life? There are simply too many planets in the universe that have nothing special like Mars!

Is it possible that human beings are so lucky to find rare life on just one planet?

Therefore, the assumption that "life is rare" has a high probability of being wrong. Therefore, the assumption is not valid, life is likely to be universal.

Although he felt a bit puzzled, Oliver did not come up with a better explanation, nor did he think of something to refute. To say that "the solar system is very special" and "humans are particularly lucky" is to lie to oneself.

Are humans really so lucky that they can encounter a small probability event on a random planet?

Then, life is universal in the universe, perhaps ... is true! Come to think of it, if life is universal, then it's not much of a surprise that our solar system has multiple living planets.

"Yes, Professor Heigl, your reasoning is excellent and there is a great possibility that it is correct. However, having life does not necessarily mean having intelligence."

The one who came forward to speak was Dr. Rimbaud, the genius of the Tesla Institute, the young man who discovered the Noah's "beyond speed program". He was young and vigorous, and would not hold back his thoughts, "It is also possible that most of the life on the planets are low-level single-celled organisms, and do not possess intelligence."

"Yes, you're right." Hagel nodded and said approvingly, "So our next discussion is whether intelligence, too, possesses universality..."