Life In Outer Space
Is It Possible?
By Nathan Locke
TOO much we hear about how "life cannot exist outside of our planet Earth" and that "space is uninhabitable." How can anybody possibly say that other planets are uninhabitable? Have they been there? Have they searched every corner of said planet until they could prove that nothing is living there? Do they have proof?
No.
There is no proof that other planets can't support life. "There's no water" or "The gas levels are too toxic." This is false, as there is no such thing as 'too' anything. Life exists everywhere, not only on planet Earth.
Take a look at humans. How strange they are. They have two arms, two legs, and a head. To other life forms, we'd look silly. But to us, we look normal. Normal. Let's think about that word. Take a walk in the street, in your backyard, look at your mother, your father, your sister, brother, aunt, uncle, friends, look at everyone. They're normal, right? Humans are normal. Now look at the smaller things. Your pets, dogs or cats. Birds in the sky, flying. Ants on the ground, crawling. They're normal too.
But wait a minute.
If humans are normal, then how can something of a complete different anatomy, a complete different race, something that's alien to the human race...be normal?
Because we're used to it. We're accustomed to it. It's normal to us, because we know it as something. A dog, a cat, these races have names. We've given them definition. Something completely unrelated to humans, and it has a definition. How can this be? Something we only know about through hands on experience, something that we can't communicate with. It's normal. It's defined.
We can't possibly rule out that, with all of the different, normal beings on this planet (that we so selfishly call our planet Earth) that there is not other life anywhere else. We are but a tiny speck on a tiny island or continent on a tiny planet. There are thousands of planets in this arm of the Solar System. There are thousands of solar systems in this galaxy, and there are thousands upon thousands of galaxies within what we know as, the universe.
So how can we say that we're alone? How can we possibly say that we are SO superior that we are the ONLY beings in the entire UNIVERSE? How come we're the special ones that exist? We're normal...
Humans breathe oxygen. We eat food and drink water to get our nutrients. We can't eat plants because we lack the enzymes required to break it down. But horses, cows, sheep, goats, all eat plants. Because they're different. But how can they be different? They're normal?
The point I'm making through this confusing, unending string of paradoxical statements, is that we can define normal, but we can't identify it. Everything is different. Fish breathe by taking the oxygen from water, and this is difficult for us to comprehend. As is the fact that us breathing oxygen from the air would be difficult for fish to comprehend. It's all about points of reference.
If fish can be so foreign to us, then why can't another life form? Who knows, maybe there's life forms living on faraway planets or asteroids, who have evolved in such a way that they can now withstand the "harsh" climate that they live in.
There's no maybe about it, it's the truth.
But hold on, now you're pulling me up against that other conspiratorial word, evolve.
There are faiths that believe that the human race was created by divine beings, or a single divine being, in the span of six days, allowing one day for rest. "The Virgin Mary" giving birth, without natural conception. Divine "interference" as I like to call it. I don't wanna be biased about this, but I find that hard to believe, that a mother can get pregnant and give birth to a god without conceiving.
But wait, science prevails again.
The definition of "virgin" in biblical times was that "you were a virgin until you had sex with a man/woman of whom you are married to." I don't mean to pry, but maybe she wasn't a virgin, she just wasn't married? Why was the bible written twice?
I'm not going to spend too much time on the topic of religion and faith. I'm an existentialist. It is what it is, nothing more, nothing less. Don't question it if it works. This is where the idea...no wait, fact...that life DOES exist on other planets. Maybe they're accustomed to living in those climates, in those conditions. Maybe the norm for those beings is to have no legs, no arms and live by suckling onto rocks, feeding off other life forms that had died and left their remains. Who knows?
The point is that without substantial evidence(and I mean SUBSTANTIAL evidence) that life doesn't exist on other planets, there is no way that any of us can take it upon ourselves to say that we, human beings, the normal race, the accepted race, is the only race in the existence of all time and space.
The universe is unending in every direction, up, down, left, right, forwards, backwards. In all eleven dimensions, it will not end. Planet Earth is not the only planet in existence, so why are we the only life?
