Atom by Lawrence M. Krauss

Author:Lawrence M. Krauss [KRAUSS, LAWRENCE M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SCI015000
ISBN: 9780759523210
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2001-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

12.

COOKING

WITH GAS

The science of life is a superb and

dazzlingly lighted hall which may be

reached only by passing through a long

and ghastly kitchen.

CLAUDE BERNARD, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE (1865)

The excitement was palpable when on March 12, 1610, Galileo Galilei announced to the rest of the world that a hidden universe existed just beyond the reach of our eyes. On the day of publication, the British ambassador to Venice dispatched a copy of Galileo’s new book to King James I, promising him: “The strangest piece of news (as I may justly call it) that he hath ever yet received from any part of the world; which is the annexed book (come abroad this very day) of the Mathematical Professor at Padua, who by the help of an optical instrument … hath discovered four new planets rolling about the sphere of Jupiter, besides many other unknown fixed stars.”

I think it is hard for anyone living at the beginning of the twenty-first century to truly appreciate how remarkable it must have been to suddenly learn that even our own solar system was not what it seemed to be. Suddenly, four new neighbors of the Earth revealed their existence. Could there be many more? And if the rest of the solar system “rolled about” the Earth, why did these four new interlopers orbit Jupiter? Even the vast power of the Catholic church at the time could not stop the revolution that was about to unwind as a result of this simple observation by a mathematician (for there were not yet “physicists”) at a small but renowned university in Padua.

To try to understand the impact of this revelation at that time, imagine that evidence is unearthed (or more accurately, “unmarsed”) today implying that 2 billion years ago intelligent life had flourished on Mars, only to die out without leaving a visible trace on the planet’s surface today. The shock would be enormous, and the implications of such a discovery would be likely to shake theological foundations at least as much as those of Copernicus or Galileo ever did.

Of course, everything we know about Mars, and everything we know about the evolution of life, argues against such a possibility. Nevertheless, I once had a debate with a reader of one of my books on the subject of possible past intelligent life on Mars. This individual was no kook. He wasn’t claiming, for example, that the afternoon shadows that accidentally produce, from a certain angle, what appears to be a face on the Martian surface was, as others have claimed, evidence of some early lost civilization. Rather, he was arguing just the opposite. We know that billions of years ago, liquid water flowed on a warmer Martian surface, and the planet may have seemed ripe for life to evolve. His point was that no visible trace of any civilization that may have lived and died over 2 billion years ago would be left, due to the ravages of time. Therefore, how could we dismiss

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