Earthly Life Avoids Replication Anywhere in Bang! The Complete History

Summary: Earthly life appears unusual if not unique in Chapter 5 of Bang! The Complete History of the Universe by Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore.

Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore explain in Bang! that, although only 50 percent of the lunar surface is visible to Earth-based observers at any one time, the Moon’s favorable librations, or wobbles, expand the Earth-based viewing range to 59 percent, leaving only 41 percent of the far side unseen from Earth; Apollo 16 Hasselblad camera image shows Hubble Crater (center left), which lies close to the near side’s eastern limb, and Joliot Crater (bottom center), a far side crater visible during a favorable libration; film magazine 122/QQ, TransEarth Coast (TEC); NASA ID AS16-122-19610: No known copyright restrictions, via NARA (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) & DVIDS (Defense Visual Information Distribution Service) Public Domain Archive

Earthly life arose because a collision created the Moon, in Chapter 5 The Emergence of Life in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe by Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore.

A collision brought Earth and a Mars-sized body together and, from impact debris, bore the Moon, stabilizer of Earth's tilted axis and raiser of Earth tides. Its small moons, Deimos and Phobos, cannot counter the tilted Martian axis of 11 to 35 degrees, contrary to Earth's 23-degree tilt, over a 100,000-year cycle. Friction driven by lunar raising of Earth tides decreases the latter's rotation period and distances the Moon from Earth by 1.5 inches (4 centimeters) each year.

Earth mass 80 times lunar mass effectuated tidal slowing of lunar rotations until spin period synchronously equaled orbital periods, as evidenced in the Moon same-facing Earth.

Synchronous orbit and spin always face one lunar side to Earth even as both hemispheres alternately, regularly face the Sun, for two day-lit, night-darkened lunar sides.

The Moon seemingly generates rocking, wobbled librations from otherwise synchronously constant rotation and elliptical speeds going asynchronous when the latter goes fastest when closest to Earth. A 500-million-year-long cooling harvested a solid-crusted Earth from a molten Earth; headed energetic hydrogen atoms spaceward and volcanic gases atmosphere-ward; and helped the ocean-forming Great Rains. Core heat from decaying, unstable heavy elements such as uranium impelled mountain-squeezing, plate-crashing tectonics that impeded smooth, water-inundated surfaces and lunar-like craters from planetary formation-induced bombardments.

The three co-authors judge the earliest-evidenced Earthly life as primitive organisms 4.3 billion years ago, rising atmospheric oxygen levels and Western Greenland's 3.8-billion-year-old Akila island rocks.

Perhaps lightning-strike and short-wave solar radiation energy kept driving chemical reactions that kindled vastly varied Earthly life from complex molecules, then self-replicating molecules, then replicating generations.

The Northern Territory of Australia lodges rock-like stromatolites that look like the fossilized stromatolite structures of blue-green, free oxygen-producing, ocean-living algae, labeled cyanobacteria, in 3.5-billion-year-old rocks. Perhaps acidic waters at 752 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius) around hydrothermal vents, around which modern-day clams, shrimps and tubeworms move, maintained the earliest Earthly life. Earthly life netted land niches during the Devonian period 400 million years ago as planets removing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen atmospherically, then arthropods, then vertebrates.

Permian ball-shaped, cage-like, carbon-moleculed fullerenes from 250 million to 310 million years ago offer trapped, unreactive argon and helium atoms, perhaps from exploded supernovae or meteorites.

Seventy percent of land vertebrates and 90 percent of marine species perished from the Great Dying, perhaps from meteorite-provoked volcanism pouring 9-foot (3-meter-) deep lava worldwide.

The 60-million-year-long Permian era quickened dinosaurian and reptilian proliferations, with the former queuing up from world-largest, the Argentinosaurus huinculensis, to perhaps world-smallest, the canary-sized Tweetieosaurus Rex. Iridium-rich 65-million-year-old rocks perhaps reveal the 200-million-year-long dinosaur rules' replacements, shrew-like animals diversifying into mammals, such as Miocene apes 40 million to 60 million years later. Iridium, Earth-rare element suggestive of meteorite strikes, supports the theory of dinosaur extinctions from a large meteorite spreading worldwide dust storms from Chicxulub, off coastal Mexico.

The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) thus far turns up no Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars, no signals from another civilization and nothing like Earthly life.

cover art for A Night at the Opera, fourth studio album, released Nov. 21, 1975, by British rock band Queen's Brian May, Roger Taylor, Freddie Mercury and John Deacon: brett jordan (Brett Jordan), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore explain in Bang! that, although only 50 percent of the lunar surface is visible to Earth-based observers, the Moon’s favorable librations, or wobbles, expand the Earth-based viewing range to 59 percent, leaving only 41 percent of the far side unseen from Earth; Apollo 16 Hasselblad camera image shows Hubble Crater (center left), which lies close to the near side’s eastern limb, and Joliot Crater (bottom center), a far side crater visible during a favorable libration; film magazine 122/QQ, TransEarth Coast (TEC); NASA ID AS16-122-19610: No known copyright restrictions, via NARA (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) & DVIDS (Defense Visual Information Distribution Service) Public Domain Archive @ https://nara.getarchive.net/media/as16-122-19610-apollo-16-apollo-16-mission-image-view-of-the-joliot-and-hubble-f7b9b2

cover art for A Night at the Opera, fourth studio album, released Nov. 21, 1975, by British rock band Queen's Brian May, Roger Taylor, Freddie Mercury and John Deacon: brett jordan (Brett Jordan), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/x1brett/5547235044/

For further information:

Marriner, Derdriu. 15 November 2012. "Goldilocks Must Like Extrasolar Planets in Bang! The Complete History." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/11/goldilocks-must-like-extrasolar-planets.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 8 November 2012. "Solar System Formation Accepts Leftovers in Bang! The Complete History." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/11/solar-system-formation-accepts.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 1 November 2012. "Star Formation Acts Local on Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/11/star-formation-acts-local-on-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 25 October 2012. "Dark Energy Accelerates Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/dark-matter-accrues-in-bang-complete.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 18 October 2012. "Dark Matter Accrues in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/black-holes-are-ionizers-in-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 11 October 2012. "Black Holes Are Ionizers in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/black-holes-are-ionizers-in-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 4 October 2012. "Ionized Gas Bubbles Atomize Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/ionized-gas-bubbles-atomize-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 27 September 2012. "Lighted Spaces Are Late in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/lighted-spaces-are-late-in-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 20 September 2012. "Inflation Affects Space in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/inflation-affects-space-in-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 13 September 2012. "Lighted Dark Space Affirms Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/lighted-dark-space-affirms-bang.html

May, Brian; Patrick Moore; and Chris Lintott. 2012. Bang! The Complete History of the Universe. London UK: Carlton Books Ltd.