A Distant Planet

I was watching PBS last night, and there was a show on about meteor impacts on Earth. The discussions among the scientists came around to the supposed discovery of proof that there at least WAS life on Mars, brough to the attention of science by the discovery of a rock, proved to be a small chunk of Mars that arrived here as part of a meteor shower some time ago, and which had attached to it what appeared to be a fossilized, microscopic, single-celled organism.

This discovery had touched off a flurry of discussions and arguments among scientists regarding the existence -- past or present -- of life on Mars and how some say it's not possible, never was possible, never will be possible, ad nauseum.

But, non-scientist that I am -- I can't even digest food properly -- I came up with a theory of the existence many centuries ago of life on Mars that I have not yet heard anyone else echo, nor have I heard anyone refute...okay, any renown GEOPHYSICISTS refute...or address....

One of the many bits of miscellany that I needlessly remember from my youth is that the universe is forever expanding, and that Earth and all of the other planets of our solar system are moving away from the sun at the blinding speed of approximately 3 inches a year...or something like that. How they're able to measure to the inch is way beyond me, but there it is.

Okay, so I'm a Big Bang evolutionist...swear to god I am...so I belive this theory. I also believe that the earth, as well as the universe, is hundreds of millions of years old. And I believe that, somewhere out there is a life form of a far superior, more advanced intelligence than the inhabitants of this planet. Okay, so, let's just keep it easy and say Earth finally formed a discernible planet with a solid crust exactly 100-million years ago. Spinning happily through space and testing the sun's gravitational limits at three inches a year for 100-million years to this day... comes out to... 300-million inches...divided by twelve, which equals... 25-million feet...divided by 5,280 (feet in a mile), which equals...4,734.85 miles.




Okay, so let's say it's BILLIONS of years old and, without slowing things down with all that pesky math, let's say that in those billions of years of moving three inches away from the sun each year, Earth arrived about 100-million years ago at an orbital "temperate zone," a distance from this particular sun -- not too hot, not too cold -- that allows carbon-based life forms like us and everything else that consumes or produces oxygen to thrive. Okay, accept that into your head as absolute truth, just for this little moment.

So, if Earth slowly traveled out to the temperate zone, and Mars is the next planet out from ours, on average approximately 48-million miles further out and traveling at approximately the same three inches per year, doesn't it seem logical that Mars was once in this temperate zone that we so thoroughly enjoy today?

Okay, so here's where you'll most likely dismiss me as a wack-job, but, let's assume that in roughly 100-million years Earth will be at the outer reaches of the temperate zone. The human species will have advanced quite far by then, provided we haven't discovered an easier way to atomically snuff ourselves out sooner. And with a perpetual winter of deep-space proportions looming quite literally on the horizon, the most advanced minds of our highly advanced species will be working feverishly on getting as many of us as possible and whatever other beings we need to support us off our beloved planet and back sunward to Venus, which will have just about cooled off enough to sustain life after entering the temperate zone a few million years earlier.

Naturally, not everyone will be able to go to Venus; actually very few. But those few who do will arrive at a planet with virtually no facilities. People will have to live in completely primitive conditions, perhaps for eons as they struggle just to survive. Differences will split the groups. Rifts will cause wars, and wars will scatter the people in all directions to form their own civilizations and adapt their own languages. Over the passage of the subsequent eons, our forms will evolve to adapt to the ever-changing terrain of the living planet, as will the forms of the animals we brought with us from Earth, and in that process, we will have forgotten all about Earth and what she was for us until, hundreds and hundreds of millions of years later someone of advanced, evolved intelligence discovers an odd little rock and determines that it's from that distant, withered third planet from the sun and, lo! There's a little microscopic bit on the rock that he insists is proof that the barren third planet which theories suggest may have held oceans, and may perhaps still have water in its ice caps, once supported life.

And, of course, his narrow-minded peers will tell him he's full of shit.


dassall