The Stages of Decay

Everything must exhaust it’s conservatory spin. Every chaotic event, pushing it‘s uncouth awakening light, dissipates, still, through a process to finality. The middle-aged sun is growing in mass to an exponentially larger version of itself. The earth is widening it’s wobbling axis in a conservation of energy. The last remnant light of a dead star meets your eyes long after it no longer exist. The canopy of space is expanding, pulling every galaxy away from another, to complete solidarity.Similarly, generations of humanity pass and new ones take their place. Young will become old; names will disappear from dialogue. Towns can rise up, then be reduced to ashes. Cities will be swallowed by sea , and new babies will be old men and women. So, I suppose everything ends.

I may at this time consider a God-like view is necessary, to step back, or above, to declare an observation of the habitual motions of everything possible to consider, and distinguish as to whether it is in fact true that our galaxy and solar system, like our personal lives, is halting to dormancy. Or more generally, whether the very universe, as some physicist have remarked, is expanding itself to inactivity, or, expanding only to bounce back and start anew. Or whether each of us eventually must not exist, regardless of our enigmatic dreams to go on in the form of time-transcending beings.

But these are not questions that faith or feelings have ever answered. They are answered by observations and evidence, and that God-like view is science itself. In fact, throughout history ideologies based on faith have been continuously adjusted and reworked to be homogeneous with the level of science accomplished at the time. The ancient Egyptians feared the sun as a God that dealt out punishment and praise according to sacrifices and social activity. The heavens held power and demanded a moral structure that fit what they interpreted would appease it’s desires. Currently, in our present state of science culture, we consider this absurd. The Sun is a rather small star on the outskirts of a spiral galaxy, which is only one of billions of others. It’s only significance, that we can tell, is it’s collection of terrestrial planets wherein one is of perfect placement and composition to support an outgrowth of sentient beings.

During Galileo’s time, the Catholic Church enjoyed the science of geocentricism. They believed that the Bible showed God as favoring Earth and humanity as the center of his attention. So, it only made sense for them that astronomers, until Copernicus, observed this as being true. When the problem of retrograde motion of stars was investigated to it’s fullest extent the answer revealed a very troubling result. Basically, that we are edge dwellers; not even close to any center whatsoever (if even there is one). Now we all know what happened to Galileo for his presentation of this horrid news. The Church was so threatened by the prospect of being a tiny insignificant planet, which seemed to counter Biblical accounts( see biblical references below), and that this could be proven, they forced Galileo to recant his findings and sentenced him to house arrest where he died in seclusion.

It was only a few years ago, I believe in the 1990’s, that the Church finally issued a formal apology for their mistake. A mistake I might add, when one’s faith takes precedence over one’s science. It was not only the Catholic Church that objected to the new heliocentric view, but also John Calvin and Martin Luther, ironically, who’s protests against Catholicism, we can thank for some of our American versions of Christianity.

From superstition, to astronomy, to Darwin’s “Evolution of the Species.” Science continues to answer that which was previously mysterious. Consider the Biblical account of Genesis. Is it true? Literally? There seems to be amongst the laypeople on this subject matter, still, a very aggressive chasm between evolution and creation (like that in Genesis.) Not surprisingly, most laypeople also don’t talk much about, that in October of 1996 Pope John Paul II accepted evolution as the truth. As well, Pope Pius XII supported the Big Bang Theory. The battle is really not, anymore, of which one or the other is true, though. It is a debate amongst believers on how we should understand the Bible in the light of all this science. But it does go to prove a point - that time after time religious faith has been adjusting it’s self so that science may serve to only compliment religion. When actually by adjusting itself it is really the kid that keeps trying to fit in.

That is where some of the basic arguments for the existence of God take route. That is, in science. I recently finished a book by Fancis S. Collins “ The Language of God,” that turned out to be a 300 page argument from design(there was also the moral argument). He was one of the lead scientists to work on the human genome project. Basically, in childish terms, that DNA is so complex, coded, and self replicating, that only God must have initiated evolution. He argues for a synthesis of religion and science in this aspect.

Furthermore, some might add, just as I used to consider this a complex possibility, that the findings of astronomy actually suggest a miraculous thing of humanity and Earth. Such improbabilities for existence could only be accounted for if God was or is involved. This has been noted by some of our countries founding fathers and heroes, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who were actually not Christians but Deists. Deism, which essentially is partial to all things science, but leaves the creation of science to an absent and uncharacterized God.

Upon first speculation this makes sense. What are the chances of the existence of sentient beings in such a violent and inhospitable universe? In 1961 a radio astronomer named Frank Drake formulated an equation for the chances of finding a “communicating civilization” such as our own, in just our galaxy alone.

If you take the product of these seven factors you get a number:
“
The number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy
X
The fraction of stars that have planets around them
X
The number of planets per star that are capable of sustaining life
X
The fraction of those planets where life actually evolves
X
The fraction of these where the life that evolves is actually intelligent
X
The fraction of these that actually develop the ability to communicate
X
The fraction of these planets’ life which the ability to communicate overlaps with ours = ? ”

Now, the number is extremely small, as you can see by the multiplication of all these fractions which continues to reduce the number significantly. Though, for the sake of the subject we can eliminate factor seven, the last one, since all I intend to relay by presenting this is the astronomically small odds of our own existence in its highly developed communicative state. Still, with these six factors, although we cannot actually know the number (its theoretical) we can get an idea of our own rarity.

There are about a 100 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy alone, and a 100 billion other galaxies with a whopping 10,000 billion stars spinning around them… and more. If we considered hypothetically that each star has, say, 10 planets a piece, then we could say there would be something like 100,000 billion planets out there. The Sun is just one star in 10,000 billion stars, and our Earth is just one planet in 100,000 billion planets. Lets just say that finding our planet in the lot of these, is worse than any lottery you have ever imagined. In fact, it’s practically non-existent from far enough away.

With these numbers it seems hard to question our rarity. And here we are- emotional, moral, rational, civilized, creative, and loving beings. Surely, there is hardly a thing like us in at least our galaxy. Furthermore, Earth- what a nice place to live, right? It has an abundant source of water and vegetation. It’s temperatures in many regions range from paradisiacal to bearable for life. It seems to renew itself as if to will itself a purpose of harboring life. How, with all these features can we not stop to think that maybe this is the design of God?

So here is excitement that ensues. Even though evolution could be true, we are nevertheless rare designed beings on a very rare perfectly designed hospitable planet. And religion, Christianity, will once again format it’s beliefs in the science of today. Is Genesis literal? Of course not they will say, “ God designed us to evolve and designed a renewable earth for which to act out our morality plays. Genesis is figurative.” But it was not so long ago when they did not and could not believe that. Still today there are many that refuse to because they consider it an insult that they may not be special like mom and God told them they were.

Is this really the case though? Is the Earth and the Sun really a designed partnership to serve us?

Lets consider this: Every atom in the Sun, like all other stars, that formed to make the sun came from a dusty nebula cloud somewhere in space. A compression wave, maybe some far off Casanova, compressed the cloud into a star birthing frenzy to eventually form a young Sun and a young Earth some 5 billion years ago. This young Earth was a violent place, battered with meteorites and asteroids for the first 500 million years, a molten core so hot that the surface was continually erupting and shifting. Eventually the Earth begins to cool down after the meteorites ceased due to a lack of space debris. So far- not a nice place.

Meanwhile, the Sun is burning through it’s fixed amount of hydrogen until eventually it begins to burn helium and other elements. Thus, it slowly begins to grow in size and burn hotter (in order to keep up with the demand of burning elements that require hotter temperatures). So, it gets warmer and brighter. The earth, cooling from it’s previous state begins to show life in the form of microbes, its spin on it’s axis begins to slow down bit by bit and it starts to wobble. Four billion 600 million years later plants begin to grow, then dinosaurs, then another asteroid, then less than 200,000 years ago some form of homo sapiens.

The example of a 24 hour movie has been a good way to illustrate the kind of time we are talking about here. If the evolution of the Earth were played from start to now in a movie that was 24 hours long, as the movie started at midnight on, say, Monday, Earth is formed. Only the last few seconds before midnight Tuesday (11:58pm Monday) would humanity show up in the movie.
Now, considering that (and this is proven) a typical main sequence star lives about 10 billion years, our Sun is middle aged at 5 billion years old, and the Earth is about the same age.

Eventually, as the Sun continues its swelling and brightening it will become much hotter and expand to a size that will, in the next 2-3 billion years engulf the Earth. But we will not make it that long, since, as it grows hotter the Earth will be charred into a desert planet (kind of like Mars). Oh and by the way, there is no escape. Our closest star is still light years away. Not only would it take the amount of fuel the U.S. uses in a year to get there, no one would survive the traveling time. And that’s traveling the speed of light! - 136,000 miles per second. (I think that’s in the ballpark)

So, to sum these events up- what’s going on here is, well…death. Or to put it another way… “ The Stages of Decay”- for the Sun, Earth and every other planet. Eventually the Sun will become hot enough to explode or become some cold dwarf star. And it is known that the Earth does not spin as it used to and it is mush less active than in it’s earlier days.

So Earth must go through the stages of decay, much like a man does. Once he is born he immediately, physically, must begin to die, despite the illusion that growth induces in him. A man may grow six foot tall through the first of his stages, just like the Earth may grow vegetation in its middle ages. But eventually it must end. The differences is that humanity will have only been here for a few seconds of Earth stages.

Now back to the 24 hour movie mentioned above. A 24 hour movie represents the half life of Earth (5 billion years), as we recall humanity showed up in the last few seconds. 48 hours would represent the entire life of Earth ( very hypothetically 8 billion years). Humanity will die before Earth, and in that time they will have, maybe, an entire 30 seconds of film time in a 48 hour movie!

This is science. The institution that religion continually attempts to adjust to. But have they adjusted to this? I don’t think so. If they did, they would have to lose all arguments that rely on the observation that this world was designed perfectly, like a watch, for us by God. The world did not evolve for us, we evolved to it - and only for a blink of an eye, I should add.

Through these “Stages of Decay,” a planet fell to a certain temperature with the right composition to host life for a very short time, then just as quick as it came, it vanishes as the stages continue past the brief point of hospitability. If we consider Drakes equation once more, we can see that the 1 in Xbillion odds could have very easily happened naturally in all the space, chances, and time in the universe. And it seems, that maybe that chance, happened here…

Final Note:

I realize that this is an extremely depressing idea. Though I’m not so sure why it is. I consider that this depression may be psychological or something nurtured within us either by others, religion, or simply our own innate will to survive forever, like any other creature. I do find some romance in the idea of life from the stages of decay, though. And that is, that the atoms that construct my body have been around since the beginning of our known universe. They have lived in the deep furnaces of some 2 generations of stars, they have traveled space, they have traveled through the Earth and of the Earth, and by some unique concatenation of events found their way to be of me, to be of my Father and Mother’s body. Every other human alive right now is a testament to these events. Two people, with atoms, possibly born from different stars light years away, find themselves face to face, after billions of years of travel, to possibly be the only elements of organum and experience for a moment, things like love, companionship, drama, music, comedy, children….life. And after we are done with these bodies, eventually they will return to a nebula to be born again, in some other star.