Life Beyond Our Imagination

What is life like beyond earth? Is it truly as mundane as we think?

Introduction:

 

The universe is so big and vast, there has to be other life out there besides us, right?

 

Using the Drake equation, scientists have been able to calculate an estimate of just how much life there might be out there (Bryson). It can seem so lonely in our solar system, feeling like the only ones that have what we have on our little blue planet. What makes our planet special? What can make other planets carry life, such a rarity it seems, too? What exactly could life look like? Let’s get started, from the beginning, and answer those questions together.

 

So Like, How Life, Live?

Scientists have decided that there are somewhat general criteria for what is needed to sustain life on a planet. One requirement is that the planet must have liquid water to be habitable (“What Makes a Planet Habitable?”). Astrobiologists believe that carbon is also unique in its ability to be the basis for life, and all of the various molecules carbon can form (“What Are The Requirements”). Due to carbon’s versatility, it is considered essential for life. A planet is also said to need to be in a ‘habitable zone’, meaning it needs to be a distance from its star where water remains a liquid. The tidal locking of a planet is considered a

reason for a planet not to be able to sustain life, even if it is a habitable zone because one side would be stuck in the cold, and one in the heat. If a planet has a lot of radiation, that as well would prevent life from developing according to astrobiologists. Having plate tectonics is another mentioned factor that could help facilitate life, as it keeps carbon dioxide levels at a goldilocks level because with too much or too little carbon dioxide the planet would be either scorching hot or ice age.

 

Experts: Are You Wrong?

Despite research having been done on planets with life, and requirements being made about them, I can’t help but remain skeptical about whether these ‘rules’ actually are accurate in determining whether or not a planet has life. If we are only considering planets with similar setups to ours when looking for extraterrestrial life, are we really looking at all the possibilities of what life on other planets could look like? It could be quite possible that the needs of extraterrestrials are different from ours on earth.

Within Chapter 16 of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, it is talked about how the living conditions for humans are so specific, and to find a planet we could inhabit puts so many factors into play (Bryson). We are very fragile beings, but a lot of other organisms have proven that life can exist even in places we thought were unhabitable.

Organisms on earth have surprised us in the environments they can survive in, so why couldn’t extraterrestrial life do so as well?

One example can be found looking at the discovery of the biologists Thomas and Louise Brock, who in 1965 discovered that life could indeed survive acidic environments, which before their finding was thought to be impossible (Bryson)! They found living microbes in the boiling water of one of Yellowstone’s pools. Scientists have even admitted that they don’t know what the limit to sustain life is, so why exactly have they tried to fit the requirements for life into a box?

Another example of life that surprised the world is an organism nicknamed the water bear (Gabbott). The water bear, actually named a tardigrade, likes living in moss and around ponds- places that could dry up. They are incredibly small animals, 1.2 mm long maximum,

and found all over the earth (Bradford). They have been called the world’s toughest creatures, as they can survive freezing temperatures, extreme dehydration, radiation, and being in outer space, along with the impact of a large asteroid (Gabbott). Their genetics have advanced over time to replace the proteins when they are lacking water in their cells while in a dry environment. A set of proteins within their DNA also are the source of how these creatures can survive radiation. A lot of times when they are in harsh conditions, they curl into a ball and go into something called ‘cryptobiosis’ which is almost like a hibernation mode for them, and they use very little energy (Bradford).

Are scientists being rigid and close-minded in their thinking when defining what is habitable? They are basing their criteria only on the life they have seen on Earth, not considering that other planets may have life with very different needs than the life on ours, which might even be hard for us to imagine.

 

Life Beyond this dimension

As life has surprised scientists about what exactly life could look like on Earth, does that mean that scientists could be wrong about what life could look like behind our planet?

That got me thinking- about not just what life would look like beyond our planet, but beyond our dimension. How could other organisms experience life beyond our dimension? Still but just a theory, alternate dimensions are a huge realm of curiosity that has made many question how exactly our world functions. Evidence has been found to support that there are alternate dimensions, despite no explicit proof. Alternate dimensions are different from parallel universes, which could be defined as alternate realities that are parallel to our own lives (Williams). Alternate dimensions exist on a different plane in the same universe.

Scientists have found there could be a 5th dimension, 6th dimension, and so on, which is part of String Theory.

String Theory involves the idea that everything within the universe is composed of vibrating strings (Lewis). Each string is smaller than a proton, and that each of these strings

could be an alternate universe. The theory itself is extremely more complex than that. It has been done mathematically though and is said to be ‘impossible to prove’. Not everyone is a believer that String Theory works, but the scientists who are convinced are working towards fully fledging out the theory and hope one day to be able to provide hard evidence. We would consider ourselves living in the 4th dimension, which consists of length, width, depth, and time (Williams). The 5th dimension would be slightly different from our own, though it’s hard to quite imagine a reality in a dimension we haven’t experienced. It is said that in theory, if you were able to ‘master’ the 5th and 6th dimension, that it would be possible to travel back in time or visit alternate futures. The higher the dimension, the more complicated that plane is and the more difficult it is to understand. So what could life look like in different dimensions? Well, let’s talk about that...

 

Breaking down sci-fi

Space and life beyond earth have inspired tons of fantasy, from books to movies, a lot of them based on someone’s imagination. Despite them being works of fiction, I feel like their ideas and concepts may be able to give scientists some insight into what possibly could be out there. With the use of someone’s imagination, some ideas can be brought to life, maybe that could be scientifically accurate, just not put to the test yet. There can be truth taken from works of fiction, even if in its entirety they don’t represent reality.

Within the film Alien Code, I found that the storyline and concepts they went into to be very fascinating and felt that could help scientists explore ideas maybe they haven’t thought of before (Cooney). The movie’s main character, Alex Jacobs, is trying to piece together what is happening to the world as he starts seeing otherworldly beings after being exposed to a device that he was asked to decode by a private company working for the NSA. His employers told him that the device was suspected to be from a future US satellite that suddenly appeared in orbit a few months prior. The device he was exposed to is slowly killing him- even though his exposure was able to give him glimpses of a different dimension. It took Alex until after he was done decoding the encrypted message to realize the damage that was done to himself.

The otherworldly beings came to Alex at one point after he finished his job, and they asked him why he took the position (Cooney). He responded by saying that he did it for the money as he was very poor. He didn’t realize until after they talked to him, that these beings were the ones who planted the device he was hired to investigate, and that they were trying to see if humanity would destroy itself.

 

The dimension that these otherworldy being lived in, had no past, no present, or future, and everything existed at once (Cooney). The film explored the idea of an alternate dimension and how other highly intelligent extraterrestrials might experience the world through a very different perspective than our own. The beings talked about not experiencing the concept of time, and how everything is known to them, and yet were having trouble understanding the concept of time, and wanted to understand the human reality. This film brought up a bunch of questions, and I tried to squeeze what possible reality I could out of this fiction movie. I appreciate how this film can make people think about how other beings could be in other dimensions and gives the audience a view at an interpretation of how one extraterrestrial might experience life.

 

Questioning life and reality:

Do you think that this movie could help give perspective to the possibilities of life that could be in existence? How do you think creative works affect the works of scientists? Positively? Negatively? Explain in the comments what you think!

Purple= image citation Works Cited

 

Bradford, Alina. “Facts About Tardigrades.” LiveScience, Purch, 14 July 2017, www.livescience.com/57985-tardigrade-facts.html.

Bryson, Bill. A Short History of Nearly Everything. Broadway Books, 2003. Cdd20. “Fantasy Night Looking at Stars and Universe.” Pixabay, 18 Mar. 2019,

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Cooney, Michael G, director. Alien Code. Performance by Kyle Gallner, The Men Productions, 2018.

Gabbott, Sarah. “Secrets of the World's Toughest Creatures Revealed.” BBC News, BBC, 28 July 2017, www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40752669.

Hannah, Daniel. “Creative Flower Eye Galaxy Collage.” Pixabay, 3 Apr. 2020, pixabay.com/illustrations/eye-creative-galaxy-collage-4997724/.

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Lewis, Geraint. “An Astrophysicist Explains String Theory in Language You Might Just

 

Understand.” ABC News, ABC News, 29 Aug. 2019, www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-08-29/string-theory-explainer-what-is-the-univ erse-made-of/11428656.

NASA. “The Habitable Zone.” NASA, 2 Apr. 2021, exoplanets.nasa.gov/search-for-life/habitable-zone/.

Nelson, Diane. “Tardigrade up Close.” Live Science, Future US, 2017, www.livescience.com/57985-tardigrade-facts.html.

Rogilbert. “Deux D-Branes Reliées Par Une Corde Ouverte.” Wikipedia, 18 Feb. 2007, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:D3-brane_et_D2-brane.PNG.

“What Are The Requirements For Life To Arise And Survive?” Las Cumbres Observatory, Las

 

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lco.global/spacebook/astrobiology/what-are-requirements-life-arise-and-survive/. “What Makes a Planet Habitable?” NASA, NASA,

seec.gsfc.nasa.gov/what_makes_a_planet_habitable.html.

 

Williams, Matt. “A Universe of 10 Dimensions.” Phys.org, Phys.org, 11 Dec. 2014,

phys.org/news/2014-12-universe-dimensions.html.

 

Zyga, Lisa. “Physicists Calculate Number of Parallel Universes.” Phys.org, Phys.org, 16 Oct.

 

2009, phys.org/news/2009-10-physicists-parallel-universes.html.