December 5, 2011
As a child whenever I cried or felt disturbed, my mother would make me glance at the sky, beautiful stars and the moon and console me. More than often I was satisfied and happy with such glances. As I started growing up, people again pointed at the sky telling me there lies the heaven. Though such arguments do not interest me anymore, one thing I realize at this point of my life, that human has a mysterious relation with rest of the universe.
Universe and Creation history
About 13.7 billion years ago, this universe was like a fire ball somewhere in the space, made of elementary particles like atoms, molecules, gas, dust etc. Tremendous explosion that caused at some point, brought about creation. This was an event, filling all the particles of the embryonic universe rushing from each other. Big bang laid foundation for the new universe.
After billions of years of Big bang, there formed a cluster of stars known as galaxies. Our solar system belongs to the Milky Way galaxy. This is roughly One Lakh light years in diameter. There are 100 billion such galaxies in the observable universe and the distance between one to the other is 3 million light years.
Earth is the largest and the densest of the inner planets, the only one known to have current geological activity and the only place in the universe where life is known to exist. Earth’s atmosphere is rich with 21% oxygen. It’s natural satellite moon is the only large satellite of terrestrial planets in our solar system.
Emergence of Life
In the beginning, there was nothing on earth that would support life. Slowly from asteroids and comets there appeared water. Thus primordial seas were formed. As the time passed, the prokaryotic cells were found and there was ingenious biological activity of photosynthesis with oxygen release, making life possible.
Due to the photosynthesis of micro organisms , large quantity of oxygen produced which managed to escape from the ocean and enters the atmosphere. Slowly jelly fish , neural gangrilla came to existence. Then there came to existence, plant cells and invertebrates.
As the time passed, immense forests with trees , as tall as 10 story buildings were found. Glaciers started melting and there was emergence of dinosaurs. Later, flowers and birds came to exist. Once everything was ready, as the crown of creation, at the peak point, there came a man , in Africa. No doubt, human is a product of the billions of years of evolution.
There were several species of human like Australopithucus Afarensis, Pananthropus Boisie, Homo Habilis, Homo Ergaster, Homo Erectus, Homo Neanderthalensis and finally at the dawn of human evolution came in the present Homo Sapiens-Humans beings. Survival of these species was purely on natural selection as Charles Darwin says.
During lunar cycles, full moon days , solar eclipses, volcanic eruptions at some part of the world, several people experience an unknown emotional drought, pain etc. What may be causing such an activity? Human is not merely a piece of flesh and bones. Human body is formed of particles from the embryonic universe. Constituents of human body are also the constituents of far away planets and stars, for everything emerged from the same initial point. Human being in reality has a mysterious relation with the rest of the universe.
As I said earlier, several species came in and vanished, and now we have Homo sapiens. All by nature’s selection. My basic question is that how far we are justified in calling Homo sapiens as the crown of creation. History repeats itself. It’s quite normal , that at some point like earlier, this species too might run to extinction. Research shows that the later species that came in, were stronger and intelligent than the earlier ones. It won’t be surprising that after a few hundreds of years, there may not be any traces of Homo Sapiens, instead there may be a far more advanced species of human which is beyond our imagination today.
Out of big bang, the existing universe emerged. Earth is merely a tiny particle of this explosion. I am too curious to know whether life exists outside the planet earth. Thinking logically, if earth contains living creatures, there may be definitely places somewhere in universe where life exists too. Possibly there may be human beings with different shapes and structures. We know too little about the universe and much remains to be known about the dark, unknown universe . I believe that at some point of time, the human from earth, will encounter the species from the outer space. That will be a unique encounter meeting far ends of the universe.
Several philosophers and scientists have often tried to understand the mystery of life. It’s a hard nut to crack, for human origin and existence itself is a mystery. Harmony that every human seeks will only come by recognizing and re-relating to his roots in the nature and universe. As I start to believe more and more that human has a mysterious relation with the rest of the universe, I continue to glance at the sky, hoping someday I’ll be able to understand a few more truths of reality, of this mysterious universe.
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