NOT Designed for Life

Former dense forest, Tunguska, Siberia

Part 4:  Forever and ever?

In the three previous articles in this series criticising the teleological / Intelligent Design (ID) argument, I have looked at the way the universe and the Earth came about, the rise of mankind, and common dangers in life we live with every day, which makes the survival of each of us extremely tenuous. In this concluding article I shall look explain how our entire species, and even all life on Earth, and how eventually it shall disappear completely.

Space is fraught with dangers. Asteroids and comets fly freely about space, but are attracted by the gravitational pull of other bodies in the cosmos. Some fragments of these break off and become meteoroids. As they are drawn in to planets, they become meteorites. Our own Moon, almost certainly the result of a planet-sized body colliding with the Earth, is testimony to the destructive potential of debris flying about in space. Also, the evidence of craters on the moon and on other planets shows just how common it is for meteorites to collide with other bodies in space. Our very survival relies upon gravity, but it is the gravitational pull of planets which pulls asteroids into them. This is precisely what happened to a comet fragment, Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) was pulled into Jupiter's gravity in 1994. SL9 impacted Jupiter with a force of 6 million megatons, which sent a cloud 3000km above the planet's atmosphere. Even an object that size would be enough to wipe out our species, and consider that SL9 was but a fragment. Earth is somewhat fortunate in having Jupiter and the other gas giants in the outer solar system, as their huge gravitational pull makes them our first line in defence against asteroids and comets. On the other hand, the pull they and the sun have actually brings these objects into the solar system, and makes a strike on Earth not only all the more likely, but inevitable.

When one looks at the way meteors have hit the Moon and other planets, they may be tempted to think just why that doesn't happen on Earth. And the simple answer is, it does – every day and all the time. Most spacebourne rocks are in fact quite small and burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere, losing most of their mass in doing so. When we see them at night, we call them 'shooting stars'. If you've ever found small, burnt, metallic-like 'stones', those are in fact meteorites, and if you ever handle one, consider that you are in fact holding an extremely ancient piece of the universe, created billions of years ago, which travelled billions of miles across space before being drawn in by Earth's gravity and burning up in our atmosphere.

The doubter may scoff at this, that if such things burn up in our atmosphere, then they can scoff all they want. For if small objects can hit Earth, it logically follows that larger ones can do so. Which of course they do; some of them much larger than others, and which can have devastating consequences.

On the morning of 30 June 1908, there was a massive explosion above the Stony Tunguska River in Siberia. The shockwave of the blast knocked people off their feet, and shattered windows for hundreds of kilometres around. Reindeer in the area were scorched to a crisp. Over 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi) were flattened, while those at 'Ground Zero' were scorched through. The shockwave was recorded by seismographs all over Europe and Asia, including in Edinburgh, Scotland, over 3500 miles away, as the equivalent of an earthquake measuring over 5 on the Richter Scale. Edinburgh was also one of a great many places across the northern hemisphere where the sky was seen to glow as bright as daylight all night long for several nights afterwards. The explosion was initially estimated to be 30 megatons, although this has more recently been downgraded to 10 to 15 megatons.

“The fire came by,” said Reindeer herdsman Ilya Popovich, “and destroyed the forest, the reindeer, and the storehouses. Afterwards, when the Tungus went in search of the herd, they found only charred reindeer carcasses.” Another eyewitness, S Semenov, stated;

“At breakfast time I was sitting by the house at Vanavara Trading Post [65 kilometres/40 miles south of the explosion], facing north. [..] I suddenly saw that directly to the north, over Onkoul's Tunguska Road, the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest [as Semenov showed, about 50 degrees up—expedition note]. The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn't bear it, as if my shirt was on fire; from the northern side, where the fire was, came strong heat. I wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few metres. I lost my senses for a moment, but then my wife ran out and led me to the house. After that such noise came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing, the earth shook, and when I was on the ground, I pressed my head down, fearing rocks would smash it. When the sky opened up, hot wind raced between the houses, like from cannons, which left traces in the ground like pathways, and it damaged some crops. Later we saw that many windows were shattered, and in the barn a part of the iron lock snapped.”

Russia at the time was in turmoil at the time in the aftermath of the first revolution of 1905. Other little matters such as the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Russian Civil War held, coupled with the remoteness of the blast site, meant that it was not until 1921 that the first expedition reached the area. Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik, based on eyewitness testimony, was persuaded that the event must have been a meteor impact. He finally convinced Soviet authorities to back a more in-depth expedition in 1927. When he reached the impact area, looking down on “ground zero” from a ridge, Kulik got the surprise of his life; there were the remnants of trees standing upright, scorched through, and further out trees were flattened out in a fan-like pattern – but no sign of the impact crater he expected to find, and which by all accounts, should have been there.

The absence of a crater at Tunguska drove science, and the general public, crazy. And for over a hundred years after the event, all sort of hypotheses which were put forward, along with the more-crazy speculation of the deluded and conspiracy theorists. Many believers in UFOs and extraterrestrial aliens postulated, and even downright maintained, that a nuclear-powered alien spacecraft had overheated and exploded. Note to anyone believing such nonsense – whatever the rights and wrongs of nuclear power, it is quite simply an impossibility for a nuclear reactor to explode like a nuclear bomb. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as various atmospheric atomic bomb tests, it was noted how trees at Ground Zero were charred through, whilst those further out were flattened in a fan-like pattern. This, along with the charring of the reindeer, eyewitness reports of clothes being burned off (actually very similar to an eyewitness report in John Hershey's Hiroshima) and reports of local people, known for their good health and longevity suddenly developing illnesses and dying early, led many others to postulate that the event may have been something causing a nuclear explosion, perhaps a pocket of antimatter entering Earth atmosphere and exploding upon contact with matter. Others claimed a nuclear weapon sent back through time from the future.

Thankfully, serious science never listened to all this daftness, and finally in 2013, Russian and American scientist found meteorite fragments in peat bogs in the impact area. This debris shows high proportions of iridium, also found in the remnants of the Chixculub Impactor, the meteor which wiped out the dinosaurs. The leading hypothesis therefore is that an asteroid entered Earth atmosphere, and exploded above the Stony Tunguska River, thereby leading to the enormous blast and catastrophic results.

Had the Tunguska meteor exploded above a densely populated area such as a major city, then it would have killed millions of people. And neither was it a one-off nor a rare event. Tunguska was indeed the largest recorded meteor event in recorded history, but there have been similar air burst meteors – bolides - in history. What is now believed to be such an event occurred in the Qìngyáng district of the then-Chinese province of Shaanxi, in which contemporary reports recorded widespread destruction and hundreds of deaths. The most recent happened right here in Scotland, on 29 February 2016, when a bolide burst with a bright flash seen from the Shetland Isles to the north of England, followed by a loud blast, 90 seconds later. Thankfully, this event was a small one, but had it been the size of the Tunguska event and had occurred in the Scottish Central Belt (roughly Edinburgh, Glasgow and surrounding areas) then it could have killed hundreds, thousands, or even millions.

Bolide explosion caught on cameras, Scotland, 29 February 2016:

The last airburst bolide to cause any injury was that which burst above the Chelyabinsk Oblast, Siberia, Russia, on 15 February 2013. The yield of the atmospheric impact was around 500 kilotons, or 20 to 30 times more powerful than the atomic bomb exploded above Hiroshima. Over 1500 people had to be treated for injuries, and the resultant blast damaged 7200 buildings in six cities around the region. Yet it could have been much worse. In 1957 there was an explosion at an underground nuclear waste repository in the Chelyabinsk region, which blew the top of the repository, and the resultant fallout leaving it as one of the most radioactive regions on Earth, which is still being cleaned up. Had the meteor burst near above, or impacted the earth in that region, then apart from immediate blast deaths, the irradiated debris thrown up could well have led to millions of cancer deaths across Eurasia.

Consider that most meteorites do indeed explode in mid-air and Earth has been extremely fortunate in not having had a ground-impacting event, such as the Chixculub Impactor, for many years, and most happened millions of years ago. This however does not mean we are safe, not by any mark. The most recent confirmed meteor impact crater is that of Nördlinger Ries, Bavaria, Germany, where an object with a diameter of about 1.5 kilometres (4,900 ft) impacted Earth around 14.5 million years ago with the force of resulting explosion had the power of 1.8 million Hiroshima bombs, an energy of roughly 2.4×10²¹ joules. Another unconfirmed crater however has been postulated as a possible impactor from as recently as c.1400. This is the Mahuika crater off the coast of New Zealand, which measures 20 ± 2 km (12.4 ± 1.2 mi) wide and over 153 meters (502 ft) deep. Reported by Dallas Abbott of Columbia University, and named by her after the Maori god of fire, the claim is disputed, but Maori legend tells of a huge explosion followed by a vast tsunami. This is important, for as devastating as a meteor strike on ground, such as happened at Meteor Crater, Arizona, if a large meteor ever hits one of our oceans – which cover two thirds of the globe – the subsequent tsunamis alone would have the potential to wipe out entire countries, killing billions. Do not forget that as I mentioned in a previous article, the vast majority of human beings live on or near to coastlines.

So, why does this happen? Well, the answer lies within our own solar system. Most come from the Asteroid Belt; an area of spacebourne rocks lying between Earth and Mars (and perhaps the remnants of a former planet), which range in size from nearly 1000-kilometres across to microscopic dust particles. As these rocks are free-floating, collisions between them can cause them to be dislodged, as can heat from the sun dislodge 'smaller' rocks (still big enough to devastate regions of Earth) by warming them more on one side, causing a gradual push, which sends them spinning. This can build up over millions of years, giving asteroids significant speed. After that, solar and Earth gravity does all the rest of the work. Some asteroids hitting the Moon or Mars can and do send shards flying off, which are captured by Earth's gravity and pulled into us.

Similarly, the way our sun and the solar system act within the Milky Way Galaxy (stop thinking about chocolate) presents it's own dangers. Our sun does not merely travel around galactic central point in an outward spiral arm. As it does so, it traverses in and out of the area of the arm – think of it very much like that of an old-fashioned carousel horse, going up and down as it goes round. Every 30 million years or so, the sun and the solar system traverse through the centre of the spiral arm, and approximately every 30 million years, there has been a mass extinction event on Earth. The solar system is surrounded by the Oort Cloud; a vast cloud of icy objects floating in space. As our solar system travels through the “danger zone”, the gravity of nearby stars pull at this cloud, which as it rebounds, sends objects hurtling inward towards the sun. We call these objects comets, and one of them, missing the outer gas giants, then skimming around the sun, slingshot by it's gravity, is what impacted at Chixculub, 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs as the dominant species.

These events are extremely important to this narrative, for they present enormous problems for the ID proponent. For if our own solar system has within it's own machinations processes which threaten our very existence, then if the ID proponent were correct, we see that our solar system, and by extension the universe itself, contain serious 'design faults'. So much for the perfectly-designed universe. Again, think of the carousel horse, think of a kid on that horse – and think of part of the overhead machinery coming loose due to a design fault and falling on top of her. Like the badly-designed carousel, if our universe is designed, then it is a shit design which the pisspoor designer ought to be held culpable for.

And worse still, if a big one did hit, there's not hellish much we can do about it. There have been various hypotheses of what could be done, but until we are in that position, we are powerless, and even then, there may be nothing we actually can do. Neither Bruce Willis and a bunch of misfit riggers, nor anyone else would be going up there to plant a thermonuclear weapon on it to blow a comet or asteroid apart, and doing so may actually make matters worse, as Earth would be hit by several objects in various places, instead of just one in one place. Placing a sail or motor to redirect the object's course may not work. Mankind may not even have sufficient time to act once the danger became imminent. That's if it even became imminent – the Chelyabinsk and Scottish meteorites came without warning. Similarly an object big enough to wipe out most life on the face of the planet, perhaps all life, could literally come out of nowhere. Or by the time it got close enough for us to send anything to meet it, it may then be too close to Earth to take any effective action. And as it first burned the oxygen out of the air and out of our very lungs, we would not even have time to put our heads between our legs and kiss our asses goodbye. Neither am I overplaying this. As I said, a mass extinction occurs approximately every 30 million years, due to a space impact. We are now well overdue having a large object hitting us, and have been lucky so far. That luck cannot last forever; it is not a matter of 'if' but 'when'.

Much less likely, yet not outwith the bounds of possibility, are black holes. In a term coined in 1967 by John Wheeler of Princeton University, Einstein's Theory of Relativity predicted “black holes” are the remnants of dead stars which have collapsed in on themselves, leaving an extremely tiny yet incredibly dense core whose enormous gravitational pull sucks all matter in it's path into it which then cannot escape, not even light, hence “black hole”. More technically known as singularities, black holes were purely hypothetical and only confirmed as recently as February 2016, when the Hubble Telescope observed gravitational waves – waves in space-time also hypothetical until recently – from two black holes merging together. Black holes lie everywhere in the universe, and not only even in our own Milky Way Galaxy, but indeed, the galaxy is here in the first place because all matter in it, including our solar system, our sun, our Earth, us, as strange as it may seem are all gradually being sucked into a supermassive black hole, billions of times bigger than the sun, which lies at the centre of the galaxy. It is possible that all galaxies are formed by such supermassive black holes drawing in matter around them.

So, whilst it is extremely unlikely, what would happen if a black hole entered our solar system? Well first it would tear into the Oort Cloud, sending a huge number of comets shooting towards the sun. At this point, it would not even be detectable, apart from slight gravitational lensing on distant stars as seen by powerful telescopes. It would not be until the black hole reached the gas giant planets of the outer solar system that it would become noticeable, and by that time it would be too late. In much the same way that we cannot see a tornado, but the matter which the vortex sucks in, as the black hole swallowed Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter, it would form an “accretion disk” of matter around it's tiny centre. Without the gas giants of course, the inner solar system would be at the mercy of any flying space debris which had managed to avoid it's pull. But by the time the black hole reached Jupiter, it would already been all over for mankind, and all life on Earth anyway. With the massive gravitational pull causing earthquakes and supervolcanoes, the likes of which Earth has not seen since its earliest days. And indeed, as Mars was swallowed up, our planet would already be reduced to a superhot ball of magma, as it was in its days of being a protoplanet, and all life would have been wiped out – not even the cockroaches could survive this one. Then our planet itself would be torn apart and sucked into the black hole, then Venus, then Mercury, then old Sol himself, before the ever-hungry monster continued across the galaxy, sucking in anything and everything in it's path.

That is but one possibility. Another is that once in the solar system, the black hole would be attracted to the two largest bodies, Jupiter and the sun. As above, the loss of Jupiter would remove our first line of defence against meteorites and bolides, then as it started to suck matter from the sun, a massive galactic 'tug-of-war' would ensue, which the sun would lose, being drawn closer to the Earth, destroying all life, and eventually either our own sun or the black hole swallowing first Mercury, then Venus, then our own planet.

Of course, this is all hypothetical and the chances are extremely slim, having been calculated at around one in a trillion. However, that one chance does not mean never, the chance still exists; it's highly unlikely that most of us will get hit by lightning – but it still happens to some. There may be as many as 100 million black holes in our galaxy alone, and we have no idea where the overwhelming majority of them have. So while the chances are extremely slim, they are by no means impossible. Of course, the naysayer may disregard this because the chances are so slim, but that misses the point, which is that again, if the universe is designed, then that design is not merely slipshod, but downright dangerous. For such a 'perfect' universe to include things which are capable of not just wiping out all life, but entire solar systems, would be nothing short of gross negligence on the part of the designer and creator.

But then, we need not worry about the long-term future of planet Earth and humanity, for if there is one thing this planet does not have, it's a long-term future.

One of the favourite – and most mistaken – claims of ID proponents is that how 'perfectly' our planet is distanced from the sun, and how 'perfectly' our moon is distanced from the Earth. They are fond of saying that a little closer to the sun and we would burn up, a little further away, and we would freeze. I have heard and read this claimed from “a few miles” to even “a few inches”, and it's complete bullshit – well, almost.

It is true that the Earth lies in a “Goldilocks Zone” which has led to the rise of life. Indeed, if our planet were closer to the sun, then the planet would be too hot for life – as we know it, just like Venus. If Earth were further away, then likewise life as we know it could not exist in the cold, just like Mars. However, our Goldilocks Zone, or Circumstellar Habitable Zone (CHZ) is extremely wide, and due to gravitational pulls and our elliptical – not round – orbit around the sun, we do draw closer to and move further from it, not by “a few miles”, unless you are counting thousands as “a few”. Add to this that Earth is not alone in the CHZ of the solar system, but Venus and Mars are indeed included in it, due to one element – water. Venus and Mars, like Earth, have atmospheres and water, which of course is essential for life to exist in the first place.

Is any of this important or relevant to this article? Yep, sure is, for one day Mars may become mankind's lifeboat. Our sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago, and is roughly halfway through it's lifetime. In around 4.4 billion years, the sun will start to expand towards it's red dwarf phase (Lister, Cat, Rimmer, and Kryten will be 6 billion light years away). As the sun begins to expand, we can kiss goodbye our CHZ, and like Goldilocks, our species, along with any other species we take, will have to run for it, or stay and die. Then Mars may become a temporary home, but even then, as the sun keeps expanding, one of Jupiter's moons, perhaps Europa (if the aliens allow us to attempt any landings there) or Titan, would be our next target. Eventually, if mankind is to survive at all in the deep, deep future, then relying upon our own ingenuity to move out of the solar system – the 'local neighbourhood' – altogether. As the sun expands even more, it will indeed consume every planet, every object, in the solar system. Eventually the sun itself would expand beyond it's own capabilities, and it's light will go out forever.

If our species has managed to survive this, then our distant descendants will be far, far from this tiny, blue-green rock we call home, which will have long since have disappeared. They will more than likely have evolved to adapt to their new environments, on another planet, in another solar system, elsewhere in the galaxy. We have after all already evolved as we populated new environments across the planet, so adapting to another planet would be an inevitability. But even that may not be a permanent home, as the star it surrounds will expand just like our sun. And of course, the entire galaxy, continually being sucked into the supermassive black hole at its centre, will eventually disappear altogether.

But even then, no matter how far mankind evolves and how far out into the universe they go, although it make take billions and billions of years, our distant descendants will merely be postponing the inevitable, the annihilation of our species, as the universe itself comes to an end. One hypothesis of this is “heat death” of the universe; that as it continually expands, it will reach a state of no thermodynamic free energy, and therefore can no longer sustain processes that consume energy, including computation and life. This idea came from the ideas of William Thomson (no relation – sadly), First Baron Kelvin, who in the 1850s took the theory of heat as mechanical energy loss in nature (as embodied in the first two laws of thermodynamics) and extrapolated it to larger processes on a universal scale.

Even before this happens, as black holes continue with no way of abating them, there is every possibility that all will remain of space will be black holes, which may very well collide with each other, becoming increasingly dense as they swallow everything up, including the very universe itself.

Or then there is the “big rip” hypothesis. It was once thought that as the universe expanded, it must decelerate, which would allow for the universe to expand so far, and then contract. In 2011 however, it was discovered that far from slowing, the expansion of the universe is in fact accelerating. For this to happen, then there must be some kind of material or field within the universe which is exerting a negative pressure, or repulsive gravity. This is called dark energy. Dark energy is everywhere in the universe and is so powerful that it has been observed to retard and even prevent the growth of superclusters of galaxies. The 'big rip' hypothesis is that as dark energy increases, it will be able to overcome all, including gravitation. Thus entire galaxy superclusters will be ripped apart, perhaps even black holes destroyed, leaving nothing of space but a cold, empty vacuum.

So, for a “perfectly designed universe”, it not only is full of things which threaten all life on a daily basis, but has within that design the very things that will cause major parts of it to break down, and may well include factors which will one day cause it to stop working altogether. It seems our designer has slapped a best before date on the “perfectly designed” universe, and like a dodgy car manufacturer, has included built-in obsolescence into the design.

In the past four articles in this series I have taken the reader of a journey from the birth of the universe, some 13.82 billion years ago, through the formation of the solar system, 4.6 billion years ago, the rise of life some 3.8 billion years ago, the evolutionary journey which against all odds led to mankind rising a mere 200,000 years ago, up to the present day, and have looked into the future fate of our planet, our solar system, our galaxy and the universe itself. I have shown any idea of the universe, the galaxy, solar system, Earth, life and mankind being created by an intelligent designer to be clearly preposterous. Yes, I have mocked, and I make absolutely no apologies for that. When the misinformed, the deluded, the frauds and the charlatans put forward preposterous ideas which have no evidence to back them up, and which cannot stand up to even the slightest scrutiny, even by a layman like me, and try to present that as fact, then they roundly deserve to be mocked. And if you think I can mock, I invite anyone to go and read or watch the claims of ID proponents, and just how much they mock serious peer-reviewed science, those who spread that science, and how they try to downright bully others, including schools, into accepting their nonsensical and baseless claims in the name of science.

This Earth, our home was never “perfectly designed” for life, nor was our solar system, our galaxy, or the universe. Nor were we “perfectly designed” for life on Earth. The simple fact is that due to the dangers of life on Earth, due to the limitations of our bodies, Homo Sapiens Sapiens evolved and adapted for life on this planet, just as every other species, be they animal or plant, has thus evolved. That is the very essence of evolution; adaptation to a given environment. “Survival of the fittest” does not mean the strongest, but which species is best suited to an environment. That's why you don't find many human beings living in the oceans, or fish in dry areas. And of course this means that we are indeed not 'top species', just best suited to the environments we choose to live in. There is no 'top species', and contrary to what some creationists and ID proponents try to claim, no-one seriously interested in evolution would ever claim any such thing. I know the idea of humanity being 'just another animal' must really stick in the craw of some creationists and ID proponents, for after all, it is they who claim that, according to their Bronze Age campfire stories of goat herders campfire tales, mankind was given “dominion” over all the species on the Earth. It is actually creationists and ID proponents who see humanity as a “master race”, while those of us who have an active interest in evolution realise that there is no such thing.

Intelligent Design, creationism and the teleological argument are sometimes referred to as pseudoscience. I would not even grace them with that title, for pseudoscience is based on mistaken notions of science. They have no such basis and are really nothing better than a fairy story – and not even a very good one at that.

Well, I for one like fairy stories, but there comes a time when one has to realise that the garden (our Earth) is beautiful and fascinating enough, without going looking for fairies at the bottom of it.