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发表于 2010-12-19 21:12:22
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VOX POPULI: Does 'arsenic bug' mean we have company?
2010/12/14
The Drake equation, devised by University of California professor Frank Drake when he was young, is a formula used to estimate the number of celestial bodies that may be inhabited by intelligent life.
The number varies according to how the equation is used. When I reported on this subject many years ago, I was told there were roughly 10,000 such stars throughout the entire universe.
This may sound like quite a lot, but actually it isn't. It is said that there are at least 200 billion fixed stars, or "suns," in our galaxy alone, and our galaxy is only one of some 100 billion galaxies throughout the universe. In other words, the chances of locating those 10,000 stars are even more infinitesimal than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.
But some people thought of such a miracle when the National Space and Aeronautics Administration (NASA) announced an imminent news conference on astrobiology discovery earlier this month. Without waiting for the conference, an American television station went ahead and speculated on the possible discovery of an alien.
What NASA-supported researchers actually discovered was a microbe that feeds on toxic arsenic, and it was found in a lake in California.
Disappointed? Well, you shouldn't be. According to scientists, the fact that this organism is based on arsenic, rather than on life-sustaining phosphorus, makes it a significant enough discovery that can overturn what we have always taken for granted--such as that no life can be sustained in the absence of water.
Life, in other words, may have far greater flexibility than we have been led to believe. This means there may be life forms, which are quite different from us, inhabiting planets in extremely severe circumstances.
Perhaps the discovery of the "arsenic bug" has raised the possibility that we humans are not alone in the universe. At the same time, this may make us think more deeply about who we are.
A poem by Fujiro Yamada goes: "Do aliens wear underwear?/ They should, because it's the essence of culture."
We humans are monkeys wearing pants. As one of them, I gaze at the night sky in contemplation.
--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 5 |
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