WHY ARE WE HERE?

I will continue to have Wednesday science, today on Why are we here?, and tomorrow delve into Where are we Going?  Sunday will usually be a time for religion, so a spiritual version of Why, which on September 28 will describe the more sacred Where.

We are here by an incredible fluke.  The odds on you being here to read this posting fall into the realm of a miracle.  But science has a best guess:

• For now, accept that there was something called the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.
• Around 12 billion years ago, our Milky Way galaxy of 200 billion stars formed.  It was as recently as 1924 when Edwin Hubble announced our galaxy was not the Universe.  

• 
  In time astrophysicists came to a realization that there are now 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. 
• But observations show that we can only see as far out to 46 billion light-years.  
• However, the sphere representing our Universe is 7 trillion light-years across, or 250 times larger, or there should be 31,250,000 trillion galaxies in our Universe.
• This is where science becomes truly weird:
• The Universe is probably not a sphere, it all depends on something called curvature, such that these three shapes seem possible:

• Then, what you see in space is only 4% of what is there.  There is the matter of dark mass and dark energy that must be there, except scientists have not yet to figure out how to measure them.
• 
  In any case our solar system formed around 4.6 billion years ago, with Earth itself 4.5 billion years old.
• Half a billion years later we had an atmosphere and oceans.
• Life came in the form of some archaea 400 million years later, or 4.1 billion years ago.

• 
  You all took science so you know that we have three domains of nature:  bacteria, archaea and eukarya (we fall in this category with slime, fungi, plants and animals).
• Well, maybe not, for if you took that course in the 1970's, there were five kingdoms, not three.
• Then in the late '70's Carl Woese complicated this system when he found another kind of microorganism, archaea.
• So scientists re-defined life, and settled on those three domains.
• Thus, if you took science in the 70's and before, first, you don't know this change, and if you do, you must be confused.

• 
  So back to why we're here, photosynthesis was created 3.5 billion years ago, allowing the oxygen concentration to grow in the atmosphere, which took a billion years or so to get about where we are now.
• The earliest multicellular life evolved around 2.1 billion years ago.
• Sex came to be 1.45 billion years ago, not for animals, for they came only 0.8 billion years ago.  These were worms and jellyfish.

• 
  Chordates came 0.54 billion (let's now go to 540 million) years ago.  You are not a chordate, which have tails.
• 394 million years ago evolved tetrapods (we qualify as one), but these in the early days only lived in the ocean.
• 384 million years ago came forests.
• 350 million years ago produced land vertebrates.
• 231 million years ago, first dinosaurs.
• 178 million years, first true mammals (they are animals with mammaries and fur or hair).

• 
  165 million years, first bird, which came from a kind of dinosaur.  But isn't a dinosaur a reptile?  So how?  Read this.  It says a chicken is a dinosaur!
• Then came that 5.6 mile wide asteroid 66 million years ago, bringing an end to most dinosaurs.
• The first primate appeared 55 million years ago.
• Earliest apes, with no tails, came 24.5 million years ago.
• Great apes around 13 million years ago.

• 
  Earliest hominins, 7 million years ago.  
• Austrolopithecus, 4.2 million years ago.  Know anything about Lucy?  She was one, found by Donald Johanson in 1974 in Ethiopia, and got that name because a tape of the Beatles' Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was repeatedly being played in his camp.
• Stone tools in Kenya around 3.3 million years ago.
• Earliest human in Ethiopia 2.8 million years ago.
• 2 million years ago Lucy's race disappears.
• First modern humans, Homo erectus in Kenya 1.8 million years ago, and they had speech.  How do we know?  According to specialists who spend their life on this subject, they sailed, so had to have a means of communication.

• 
  First use of fire a million years ago, also by Homo erectus.
• Neanderthals rise half a million (500,000) years ago, leaving Africa early and settling in Europe.
• Homo sapiens in Morocco and South Africa 315,000 years ago.

• 
  Homo sapiens out of Africa 210,000 years ago.
• 170,000 years ago:  humans use clothes and formed settlements.
• 125,000 YA:  earliest art, by Neanderthals.
• 100,000:  interbreeding by Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals.

• 
  75,000:  first jewelry in South Africa.
• 64,800:  first cave paintings by Neanderthals.
• 46,000:  first modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens.
• 42,000:  first musical instrument, a flute, made from bone and ivory, and fishing hooks.
• 33,000:  first settlement in the Americas (Mexico).  By ocean from Europe or Asia?

• 
  20,000:  earliest pottery in China and domestication of dogs in Germany.
• 15,000:  all continents occupied, except Antarctica.
• 12,000:  extinction of woolly mammoth caused by human hunting.
• 11,400:  first farms in the Fertile Crescent (Middle East).

• 
  11,000:  first walled city, Jericho in Palestine with 3000 population.
• 10,500:  domestication of animals for consumption.
• 10,000:  cultivation of wheat in Mesopotamia and ice sheets withdraw from Europe and North America.
• 8000:  cultivation of rice in Asia and wool spun in Mesopotamia.
• 7900:  Copper Age.

• 
  7500:  Biblical flood of Noah's Ark.  (historically possible)
• 7000:  world population reaches 5 million.
• 5400:  invention of the wheel and earliest numeral system in Mesopotamia.
• 5300:  earliest writing system and Bronze Age in Egypt.
• 5100:  first governance in Egypt, Mesopotamia and India.

• 
  4700:  earliest pyramids in Egypt.
• 4500:  writing on papyrus in Egypt
• 4200:  first code of law in Mesopotamia.
• 4000:  invention of ice cream in China.
• 3400:  earliest music in Syria and concrete in Greece.

• 
  3000:  world population of 50 million.
• 2950:  first Jewish temple and the rise of King Solomon.
• 2800:  first Olympic games in Greece.
• 2700:  earliest use of metallic money in what is now Turkey.
• 2650:  first library in Iraq.
• 2600:  peak of Greek civilization.

• 
  2550:  first army, in Sparta, Greece.
• 2500:  Confucius.
• 2450:  Buddha.
• 2400:  Plato's academy in Greece.
• 2200:  Great wall of China begins; completed 1644 years ago.

• 
  2100:  Silk Road opening trade between East Asia and Southern Europe.
• 2050:  Rise of the Roman Empire in now Italy.
• 2000:  approximately...Jesus Christ.
• AD 100:  first porcelain in China.
• AD 300:  first compass in China.
• 347:  first oil well in China.

• 
  600:  rise of Islam in Arabia (Muhammad, Mecca, 632)
• 904:  gunpowder in China.
• 900:  first windmill in Iran-Afghanistan.
• 1215:  human rights, Magna Carta, King John, England.
• 1337:  accretion of personal wealth in gold, Mansa Musa, Emperor of Mali...richest person in history.  (Jeff Bezos does not even make the top ten in history.)
• 1347:  Black Death caused by a bacteria carried by lice on rats kills half the population of Europe.
• 1400:  Renaissance in Italy.
• 1492:  Christopher Columbus from Spain to America.

• 
  1500:  Leonardo da Vinci.
• 1522:  Magellan around the world (he died along the way).
• 1543:  Copernicus--Earth revolves around the Sun.
• 1582:  Gregorian (for Pope Gregory XIII) calendar.
• 1609:  Galileo creates a compound microscope, inverting a telescope.
• 1660:  world population reaches 500 million.
• 1687:  Newton, laws of motion and gravitation.

• 
  1769:  James Watt, steam engine.
• 1776:  Independence, creating the USA.
• 1779:  first battery by Volta of Italy.
• 1817:  first bicycle in Germany.
• 1822:  Joseph Fourier of France predicts global warming.
• 1859:  theory of evolution by Charles Darwin of the UK.
• 1876:  telephone by Alexander Graham Bell of the USA.

• 
  1879:  Edison's light bulb.
• 1880:  adult literacy reaches 20% in the world, improving to 85% in 2010.  Today, 90% for males and 83% for females.  Afghanistan...32%, today.  Chad...23%, today.
• 1884:  first rooftop PV by Charles Fritts, USA.
• 1886:  first car by Karl Benz of Germany.

I can go on and on, but you can read the rest by going to THIS.  In 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright flew.  Kane Tanaka of Japan was born in that year, and is now the oldest person in the world.

I've left out a lot details, but this is how you came to be.  But philosophically, why are we here?  A lot of luck.  Could this have happened anywhere else in the Universe?  Probably, but the odds are kind of low.  Don't expect alien intelligent life to look like us.  They could be invisible...and first communication might come from another form of artificial intelligence, more like a computer.  

I said this blog site will try to be as short as possible.  This posting will hopefully will be a gross exception.

With all the fuss Democrats are making about the insensitive and disgracious manner Republicans led by President Donald Trump are proceeding to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, in parallel they are doing everything possible to take-over the U.S. Senate.  Funding is being shored up in battleground states, where threatened abortion and health rights could, on balance, support their candidates.  On the main ticket, Kamala Harris is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and they will find a way to take advantage of that opportunity.  Cory Booker also sits on this panel.  They feel that if they win the White House and Senate, two more Supreme Court seats can be added to bring the 6-3 Conservative control to 5-5, with Chief Justice Roberts at least a "fair" swing vote.

President Trump has convinced the U.S. Senate to help him improve the public perception of HIS vaccine development, and the hearing today prepares the groundwork for FDA approval of a vaccine by next month.  A Honolulu engineering firm, Oceanit, has reached the semifinals of competition for an XPRIZE for Rapid COVID Testing.  Theirs is a saliva test that produces results in 3-10 minutes at a cost of $20.  Here is CEO Patrick Sullivan.  Five winners will share $5 million.

To add to the top candidates, the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute announced the development of an inhaled drug cocktail that shows promise as a temporary therapy.  Essentially, the system provides single-chain antibodies that would neutralize this coronavirus employs to infiltrate cells.

#98 is from disco time, one of my favorite genres.  This dance revolution began in the late 60's, and phased out in the U.S. by the end of the 70's, while remaining popular in the Orient into the 90's.  Maybe that's why I identify most with the later and post releases.  Disco's legacy is that it evolved into the electronic dance music of today.  My favorites are:

• Funky Town Lipps Inc   (1980)
• Last Dance   Donna Summer  (1978)
• Gloria   Laura Branigan (1982) 
• I'm So Excited   Pointer Sisters  (1984)
• Staying Alive  Bee Gees  (1977--sometimes credited with sparking discotheques, it actually came near the end)
• Disco Inferno   The Trampps  (1976)

• We Are Family   Sister Sledge  (1979)
• Le Freak  Chic (1979)
• I Will Survive   Gloria Gaynor  (1978)
• The Hustle   Van McCoy (1975)
• Billy Jean   Michael Jackson (1983)
• Borderline  Madonna (1984)

I notice that many, if not most, are like Martian astronaut Matt Damon, who hated disco music.  I travelled through the Orient a lot in the 80's and 90's, and discotheques remained popular through that whole period, especially in South Korea.  So many memories...the Taipei Hilton, Seoul Lotte...but I can't seem to pick a favorite tune.  Let me just say Gloria by Laura Branigan as #98.  That was the lengthy concert version.

Let me end with a soap bubble:

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