“One can best feel in dealing with living things how primitive physics still is,” said Albert Einstein. “Can life be explained in terms of physics or will it always be a mystery? And if physics can explain life, is existing physics up to the job, or might it require something fundamentally new – new concepts, new laws even?” asks Arizona State University cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and astrobiologist, Paul Davies answering Einstein.
Life is incredibly resilient. In April, 2019, a microscopic, multicellular species, also known as the water bear, likely made it out alive following a crash landing on the Moon’s surface by Israel’s Beresheet probe. Based on an analysis of the spacecraft’s trajectory and the composition of the device the micro-animals were stored in the chances of survival for the tardigrades… are extremely high,” reported AFP, adding that the diminutive creatures, which are under a millimeter (0.04 inches) in size, had been dehydrated to place them in suspended animation, then “encased in an epoxy of artificial amber, and should be revivable in the future.”
“Any extraterrestrial organisms we find will be made of the same atoms we are,” observes Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics, Avi Loeb, about the recent detection of a potential biosignature in the atmosphere of Venus, the nearest planet to Earth where NASA is currently considering sending a spacecraft.
“So they’re kind of like dark matter,” said paleontologist David Jablonski of the University of Chicago about the sanctuaries, the “refugia” that have never been found in the fossil record, but sheltered the shell-shocked and decimated species of Earth’s past mass extinctions until they were able to repopulate the planet in ensuing eons.
It’s been said that the tardigrade, an eight-legged microscopic creature –the most resilient form of life on our planet, that can exist for up to 30 years without food or water and endure temperature extremes up to 150 degrees Celsius– will exist until the Sun dies.
“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe,” observes physicist Michio Kaku. The neocortex, observed Carl Sagan is where “matter is transformed into consciousness.” Located deep in the brain’s center, the subcortex, the most evolutionarily ancient part of our brain, processes everything from our basic senses to long-term memories.
