The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [91]
Richards interrupted to say, “Of course, we’re not looking at these galaxies as they exist now; we’re looking back in time, say, nine billion years ago. It’s possible that some of those galaxies are now at the state where the Milky Way is. We don’t know for sure.”
“But,” added Gonzalez, “this was back when it was much more dangerous, because it’s the era of quasars, supernovae going off, and black holes. Even if you had a few regions in the galaxy where there were sufficient heavy elements to build Earths, they would have been so irradiated that life wouldn’t be possible.”
With elliptical galaxies being unlikely sites for budding civilizations, I turned to the last category of galaxy, called irregulars. “What’s their potential for life?” I asked.
“Like the ellipticals, they also don’t provide a safe harbor. In fact, they’re worse. They’re distorted and ripped apart, with supernovae going off throughout their volume. There are no safe places where there are fewer supernovae exploding, like we have between our spiral arms.
“In fact, astronomers keep finding new threats to life. For example, we’re learning more about gamma ray bursts, which are more powerful than a supernova. If one of these goes off near you, the lights go out. So the probability for there being civilizations elsewhere actually keeps declining as we learn about the new threats that we didn’t know about before.”
“What’s your opinion, then, about where Earth is located in the universe?” I asked.
“In terms of habitability, I think we are in the best possible place,” Gonzalez said. “That’s because our location provides enough building blocks to yield an Earth, while providing a low level of threats to life. I really can’t come up with an example of another place in the galaxy that is as friendly to life as our location. Sometimes people claim you can be in any part of any galaxy. Well, I’ve studied other regions—spiral arms, galactic centers, globular clusters, edge of disks—and no matter where it is, it’s worse for life. I can’t think of any better place than where we are.”
“That’s ironic,” I said. “It’s the reverse of the Copernican Principle.”
Richards agreed. “The propaganda of the Copernican Principle has been that the long march of science has shown how common and ordinary our situation is. But the trend is in the opposite direction. The more you pile on the threats we’re discovering in most places in the universe, and you contrast that with the many ways we’re in a cocoon of safety, the more our situation appears special.”
“The most famous example is our own solar system,” Gonzalez said. “At one time or another, scientists have speculated that there are civilizations on just about every body in our solar system—the moon, Mars, Jupiter.
“Percival Lowell built his own observatory in Arizona to find these civilizations on Mars. He actually quoted Copernicus to justify his belief that we can’t be the only civilization. Now they’ve backtracked to the point of saying, well, maybe there’s some very simple slime mold beneath the surface of Mars or Europa. And even that is extremely questionable. That’s how far back they’ve had to retreat.”
“Very often,” observed Richards, “the Copernican Principle describes properties that don’t matter. Who really cares whether we’re in the physical center of the galaxy? It’s irrelevant! What really matters is being in the place that’s most conducive to life. And that’s exactly where Earth finds itself.”
PLANETS CIRCLING OTHER STARS
Within the last few years, astronomers finally have been able to discover planets orbiting other stars—a major confirmation of what was once merely widespread speculation. “Doesn’t this confirm that there’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary about our nine-planet system?” I asked.
“I’ll concede,” said Gonzalez,