Living in the Cosmos

On Earth, all of our home, there are many different types of life. From us, humans, to bacteria to trees to fungi, life is all around us. The interesting thing about life on earth is that it all comes from a similar beginning. All life on Earth that we know of is a carbon based life form, or organic. According to evolution, all life today would have started from a single celled organism, millions of years ago, which through genetic mutations eventually changed into all the organisms around us today, including you and I.

This evolution of life here on Earth has inspired a search for life on other planets around the galaxy. You may have heard of planets which fall in the so called "Goldilocks Zone". This means the planet is the perfect distance away in its orbit from its star that the temperature and conditions would be similar to those of Earth, and could theoretically harbour life similar to that of our own planet. Most of the search for life in this field of astrobiology is focused on the search of carbon based life, and most of what you hear about in the news about the possibility for life in the universe will be something about carbon based life specifically. 

This makes sense why it happens, we are curious about other life like us, and the possibility of other humans and intelligent life with whom we could communicate. It is a logical place to start, since the only life we know of is carbon based, why shouldn't we look for other life like it. To me, this point of view is understandable, but somewhat closed minded. 

We only know of one type of life, life like us. So as far as we know this is all that exists. But what is to say there isn't life of many different kinds, most of which is probably nothing like us. Take a minute and try to think about how big the universe is, how immensely large it really is. Think about the possibility of it being infinite, and truly go on forever. Never ending. Its a tough thing to do because our brains aren't suited to think of such things, but still give it a chance. Now think of the possibilities of life within this infinite universe. If the universe is truly infinite, it never reaches its end so anything you could ever think of would have to exist somewhere in the universe, because everything is less than infinity. This is a tough concept to grasp but bear with me. 

If you're thinking of every possibility in infinity, there are probably a couple types of life that don't exist here. Not just different species, but totally different types of life. They could have a totally different elemental structure, they could be larger than our entire planet, there really are and endless number of possibilities of what really could be like. This isn't the easiest thing, but I really encourage you to think about what might be out there. It can be cool to see what your brain can come up with, and thinking about if the universe is infinite and what you think up may actually exist is very exciting. 

There is an important difference here to make between thinking the universe is infinite and what it actually is. Right now, we know generally how old we think the universe is, at least how far we can see so a general sense of scale, and other general ideas about the immensity of the cosmos, but we really can't know. The universe is just too big to see the end of it, and possibly we never will. So when I say the life form you think about could exist at some point, it could very well exist but we may never know if it does or doesn't. Thinking in terms of infinity can be powerful, but I caution at trusting its conclusions, they are all only possibilities.