Laboratories use petri dishes to conduct experiments on how (bacterial) cultures grow. Imagine this now: planets are like petri dishes and evolution and life are its lab experiments. I have held this thought for a while but it felt premature writing about this.
Several recent articles have changed my mind:
- Nature, June 2019: Pluripotency and the origin of animal multicellularity;
- University of Queensland, June 2019: Evolutionary discovery to rewrite textbooks;
- Scientias, June 2019: eerste meercellige dieren ontstonden heel anders dan gedacht;
- Quanta, June 2019: Bacterial Complexity Revises Ideas About ‘Which Came First?’.
Based on this laboratory analogy, some initial conclusions may be drawn:
- It’s a matter of time before Life is found in the habitable zone of other planets;
- Like the Arrow of Time, the Arrow of Evolution is towards complexity (my 2018 blog);
- Complex lifeforms are more likely on habitable planets older than Earth;
- Bacteria and viruses may be universal incubators of planetary life (eg, Space-2017).
Interestingly, however you want to view evolution, you always come back to a hybrid explanation of religion (who, why) and science (how, when). This makes me wonder whether that distinction in evolution (ie, creation-evolution controversy) makes any sense at all.
The diagram to the left shows the Arrow of Time versus the Arrow of Evolution versus my concept of the 7 Belief systems.
I’ve borrowed the concept of higher lifeforms versus lower lifeforms from a friend from India. It fits very well with human beliefs.
Based upon this diagram, I’m tempted to argue that (human) complexity always destroys simplicity (eg, climate change, ecology, other species).
This line of thought also explains the human fear for aliens (my 2016 blog), including the Fermi Paradox (my other 2016 blog).
PS: after writing the above blog last week, I received the Aeon weekly newsletter, featuring this 14 June article: The idea of creating a new universe in the lab is no joke. The same my apply to my question: are planets evolutionary lab experiments?
Poison Arrow (1982) by ABC
artist, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise.
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