Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label high metallicity galaxy

Lucky Earth

A random sample of the collection of improbable and mutually exclusive events that led to our emergence here on this rock. If the Sun formed in a region with less or different gas contribution the Earth would likely have an ammonia Ocean instead of a water one. If the proto planetary disk didn't have so much accreted asteroids and comets proto Earth would not have gained so much water and would likely be dry. If the Earth didn't accrete as much dust as it did, we'd have a smaller radius and likely not have a radioactive active core..the active core is what produces our magnetic field and thus protects us from the deadly solar wind of the sun. Life would not exist. If the proto Earth had not been struck by another body just before 4.4 billion years ago, the planet would not have reconstituted into the present Earth 2 + moon system. Without the gyroscopic stabilization of the moon against the distant but influential gravitational nudges of Jupiter we'd have no predictable...

The Fermi Paradox, not so paradoxical?

May, 19 ,2008: In an email with a colleague, I postuled on the significance that gamma ray bursts in the young milky way might have retarded the growth rate of life in the entire galaxy. In a longer email response I listed out the mechanism for my idea. Essentially, GRB's and mettalicity may lead to conditions that periodically restart life processes on a galactic scale. Combined with the stellar level events (asteroids, comets and proto planetary body incursions) this explains a great deal of the reason why we haven't been visited by LGM's. It could simply be the fact that the galaxy and the solar system has only quited down enough for life and intelligent life in general to advance to the point that they would discover advanced technology and the ability to propel themselves between the stars. We are all (those forms of life in elementally conducive parts of the galaxy that is) at roughly the "same" level of technological advance (even if "same" can h...