A Flower In the Desert
2004-02-04, 1:45 p.m.

If the universe were made of sand, we would be a flower in the desert.

Bryson�s A Short History� has progressed into the realm of life�s beginnings, and it�s waking my philosophy brain. Bill surmises (in chapter 19, if you care) that, with the universe�s tendency toward organization, be it in chemicals, minerals or whathaveyou, life is not only probable, but most likely inevitable. That�s a big statement, and one derived from discussions with and readings of a number of scientists in varying fields. Here�s a clip from the chapter:

So powerful is this natural impulse to assemble that many scientists now believe that live may be more inevitable than we think - that it is, in the words of the Belgian biochemist and Nobel laureate Christian de Duve, �an obligatory manifestation of matter, bound to arise wherever conditions are appropriate.� De Duve thought it likely that such conditions would be encountered perhaps a million times in every galaxy.

I guess it�s hard to think of life evolving from all this to be anything but miraculous when it�s impossible to grasp the immensely huge size of our universe and how it could have so many chances to evolve life even by so speculative a means. Try and think of the pre-Big Bang universe as a fruit, becoming overripe and then bursting. It scatters both seed and nutrient in the form of pulp, and in some places a seed lands, in some places pulp lands, and in some few places, both land together. With some luck, some of the seeds germinate. The ones with nutrient to supplement it live beyond a few days, and then a percentage of those go on to become plants. Some of those plants manage to flower.

So let�s say that 1% of the seeds manage to both grow and flower. If a fruit holds, say, 1000 seeds, that still leaves us with 10 flowering plants. A tenth of a percent still leaves us with at least one flower.

Now consider that there are, by estimation, about ten thousand billion billion (that�s 1 with 22 zeros after it) stars in the known universe. If each star were a seed� you do the math. Mainly cos I�m bad at math. Even with so dubious a system, life happens, a lot.

Our little world is a flower in the desert. With so high a probability that there are other flowers out there, somewhere in the desert, it would be a shame if it were to die out before seeing another one.

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