Not that this is the entire story. Just being in the Goldilocks Zone doesn’t guarantee liquid water, as planets also require sufficient atmospheric pressure, lack of runaway greenhouse effect, and so on. For example, Venus, the Moon, and Mars are all within our Goldilocks Zone, but none of these bodies contain liquid water (as far as we’re aware).
Over the past few decades, it’s become increasingly clear that most stars have planets that orbit them, substantially increasing the odds that life exists elsewhere in the universe. For this reason, the Goldilocks Zones for solar systems and our galaxy have become more and more important to astronomers, cosmologists, and those engaged in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
In my own view, I believe our thinking in this regard is too provincial, too narrow, and doesn’t give life its proper due. As Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) said in Jurassic Park, and I quoted in the novel, “Life finds a way.”
Just because the life we know can’t exist in extremes of heat, cold, gravity, lack of water, high radiation, intense pressure, and so on, doesn’t mean that there aren’t forms of life beyond our ability to imagine, based on entirely different principles, that can not only survive in these forbidden environments, but thrive.
For example, we once believed we had a handle on where life can and can’t exist on our own planet, but we’ve now learned there are organisms (extremophiles) that can exist in all kinds of environments and conditions we didn’t think possible, like Arctic ice, deep-sea thermal vents, dark caves, lakes of acid from mine runoff, high salinity environments, the vacuum of space (Tardigrades), and so on.
Einstein’s Happiest Thought (possibly implanted by aliens) A few of the simplest of thoughts led Albert Einstein to work his way through the most complex, and go on to become a pivotal figure in the history of physics. These thoughts were so simple they could have been implanted by aliens in his sleep. I’m not saying they were, mind you, but they could have been.
First, he imagined what it would be like to chase a beam of light. This led him to Special Relativity.
Later, he considered the downward force one felt when riding a rapidly rising elevator, and realized that gravity and acceleration were just two sides of the same coin—the equivalence principle—which enabled him to finally crack General Relativity.
I’ll elaborate just a bit here because I’ve always found the idea behind what Einstein himself called his happiest thought quite fascinating.
Einstein was in his patent office when he imagined a man falling from the roof of his house. He realized that while the man was falling, he couldn’t feel the effects of gravity at all. For example, if he let go of his toolbox as he fell, it would stay by his hand rather than drop to his feet, just as would be the case if he were floating weightless in space.
Taking this further, he realized that if he were inside an isolated elevator chamber, it would be impossible for him to know if the elevator was on Earth, in a strong gravitational field, or in deep space with no gravitational field at all.
Say he stood in the elevator compartment, dropped an apple, and it fell to the floor. Did this mean he was on Earth? Not necessarily. Because if the elevator were inside a spaceship accelerating upward at just the right rate, the apple would fall to his feet in the exact same way.
He realized that there was no way to tell the difference between gravity and acceleration. Even in a gravity-free region of space, objects fall toward the floor in a room being accelerated. And even on a planet, objects can become weightless, as long as they’re in free fall.
This led Einstein to postulate that gravity isn’t a force at all, but a geometric property, the warping of the fabric of space-time itself. Even though this simple thought provided the answer he was looking for, the math required to characterize the idea was brutally complex (given that he needed to solve for four-dimensional space-time), and it took him eight additional years to finally get it right.
Is consciousness a quantum effect?
First, I should quickly summarize what I mean by a quantum effect for those of you unfamiliar with the field. Quantum physics is perhaps the most successful scientific theory of all time, its stunningly accurate predictions responsible for a third of the global economy, including computers, cell phones, MRIs, lasers, and all other electronics. Even so, it is extremely bizarre, and no one really understands it. For example, it has been conclusively shown that particles can be anywhere until we observe them, can pop into and out of existence randomly, and can be entangled with each other, such that a certain action performed on one can instantly impact the other, even if it’s a million light years distant.
Recently, evidence is mounting that biological systems take advantage of these strange quantum principles, and that consciousness, itself, is a quantum effect. I have written about this in the text and notes of other novels, so I won’t do so again. But for those of you with interest, I recommend the 2018 article in Discover Magazine (with embedded link) shown below.
Can Quantum Physics Explain Consciousness? One Scientist Thinks it Might
Is the universe itself conscious?
In the novel, Nari mentions in passing that the Federation may have just gotten lucky that humanity resides between the Swarm and all twenty-two current member species. But he also allows for the possibility that this isn’t just luck, that the cosmos itself might be conscious.
I went on to briefly mention that the structure of the universe has been found to resemble the structure of the brain, and I won’t go into any greater detail here. If you Google, is the universe structured like a brain, you’ll find a variety of articles, although they all stem from a single study. If you have further interest, I’ll refer you to a 2020 article in Popular Mechanics (with a link) below.
The Human Brain Looks Suspiciously Like the Universe, Which May Freak You Out