Home Alone?
Can Life Exist Beyond Earth?
Milky Way Galaxy
Suppose you inquired of God if we were “home alone” in the universe, and he dispatched an angel to currier his reply by letter to your galactic address?
12345 Babcock Blvd. Gibsonia, Pennsylvania, USA
Planet Earth - Solar System - G2V star (Sun);
Interstellar Neighborhood; Orion Spur; Perseus Spiral Arm
Milky Way Galaxy (MWG); Local Galactic Group;
Virgo Galactic Supercluster; Laniakea Super-Supercluster; Universe
Look up at the sky on a pitch black, cloudless night. If you could count all the visible stars with the naked eye, assuming 20/20 vision, they would add up to a 4,548. Now try to envision 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000; that’s the estimated number of stars that populate the observable universe! Such an incalculable number makes me feel infinitesimally small and God incomparably enormous. No wonder David penned “Lord, what is man that you regard him?” (Psalms 144:3). Ever wonder how many of those stars might qualify as candidates to birth and sustain life, at least as an earthling might understand life? Of course, nobody (but God) knows that answer, but science can at least speculate on a few factors that would prevent life from ever getting established in a stellar or galactic system. Let’s use our Sun as an example, since we know for sure that it possesses all the characteristics to support life. The Sun, like all other stars, has a life-cycle – womb, conception, birth, youth, middle age, old age, and death.
Womb
The Milky Way Galaxy (MWG), like a womb, is where the Sun was conceived. Of the over 100 billion galaxies, most would not qualify to host life. The galactic supercluster is too dense or too sparse. The galaxy is too young or too old to host stars like the Sun. Only spiral-type galaxies are suitable. Too much lethal radiation from neutron stars, super-sized stars, and super-novae. Too much gravity or radiation from black holes. Missing the elements needed for life. The MWG may be the only galaxy in the universe perfectly fine-tuned for life.
Conception
All known elements of the Universe are formed inside stars by a process called nucleosynthesis. The proto-Sun is believed to have been conceived as a “stellar nebula” near a tightly packed cluster of roughly 10,000 stars, located in orbit 13,000 light-years from the galactic center of MWG. It was during conception, over 6 billion years ago, that the proto-Sun received its unique suite of 118 elements that make up our periodic table; most stars are composed of just a few elements. God used 36 of these 118 elements to form mankind; we really are ‘star dust’, a reflection of our Sun. Based on chemistry, most stars would not qualify for life.
Birth
Just as Earth takes 365 days to finish one trip around the Sun, the Sun follows a nearly circular orbit within the co-rotation zone, completing a cycle, at 550,000 miles per hour, around the Milky Way core in around 230 million years. As God moved the Children of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land, He seems to have miraculously moved our Sun (and solar system) on a 13,000-light-year journey away from the deadly black hole core to settle in the ‘promised land’ of the co-rotation orbit. The unique properties of this orbit make it the only place in the MWG capable of birthing and sustaining life. The Sun was born some 4.57 billion years ago; proto-earth accreted shortly thereafter; the Earth-Moon pair formed 150 million years later.
Youth
Stars are like giant nuclear furnaces that give off light and energy by converting hydrogen into helium as they age; every second the Sun converts 600 million tons of matter into neutrinos, solar radiation, and energy. A typical life-cycle for a star like our Sun is 10 to 12 billion years. To support life, and eventually, mankind, both Sun and Earth needed to be in sync; the Earth had to adjust to the ever-increasing solar output from the Sun. Today, as the 5-billion-year-old Sun approaches middle age, it is over 30 percent “hotter and brighter” than it was when Earth first began to form. The numerous adjustments within Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and crust to support life are extremely “fine-tuned”, leading one to conclude there was a Divine Purpose working behind the scenes. The youthful Sun could support only simple, emerging life-forms, not advanced human life.
Middle Age
The Sun has reached middle age. By coincidence it is currently so fine-tuned with Earth that conditions are seamless for the arrival of mankind? In fact, there is no other time in our planet’s history that is more perfectly suited to support 7 billion human beings. But that window will gradually close as the Sun continues to heat up at the rate of one percent per 100 million years. That may not seem like much, but it is enough to threaten man’s survival in just a few ten-thousands of years.
Old Age
By the time the Sun reaches old age, a few billion years from now, life on the surface of Earth will no longer be possible. The Sun will be 40% brighter than present which will cause the oceans to boil, the ice caps to permanently melt, and all water vapor in the atmosphere to be lost to space.
Death
A little over 5 billion years from now, the Sun will have used up all its hydrogen fuel; at that time, it will have expanded into a “red giant” phase with a diameter greater than the Earth’s orbit. The outer portion will break up into a nebula while the inner core collapses into a new phase called a “white dwarf”. It will take the white dwarf star over a trillion years to cool into a black dwarf star, likely a pure diamond. The Sun never actually dies, it just changes state.
The Sun and its galaxy, the Milky Way, are so incredibly fine-tuned to support life, that it is probably a one-of-a-kind scenario. Outside of a spiritual realm populated with angels and demons, the Bible provides us no clues concerning physical life beyond this Earth. Of course, God “could” have planted colonies elsewhere – because he is God – but science can’t support or reject that notion. Unless “aliens” come to us, it is highly improbable for humans to ever confirm extra-terrestrial life. I think it’s safe to say we are “home alone” in the Universe, until God fulfills his John 14:2 promise to prepare a new home designed for us and angels.
