A Fortuitous Planet
Why humanity is lucky to be here
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If humans could explore the planets of the distant universe, what would we find? Would we encounter dead rocks floating in the abyss, or planets teeming with life? Would we need to confront life that is more advanced than us? Or is the universe filled with ruins, like Rome or Greece today, of complex civilizations that have long since perished? The history of the universe suggests that indeed, our existence as sentient molecules on this planet is fortuitous and something to be appreciated and safeguarded.
To the best of our knowledge, the universe began some 13.8 Billion years ago with the ‘Big Bang.’ Before that moment, per our current understanding at least, nothing existed. Everything that would ever be, was compressed into an unimaginably small space, a ‘gravitational singularity’ far smaller than an atom. So dense, in fact, that it infinitely curved space-time such that the concept of time didn’t even exist. Within the singularity, the four fundamental forces we know today (weak nuclear force, electromagnetism…
