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Language: en
And now for some final thoughts on where
we came from. We only recently figured
out the origin of our own moon. And we
have some idea of how the sun and earth
formed, but that's only because modern
telescopes empower us to see other stars
and planets freshly hatched within gas
clouds across the galaxy. As for the
origin of life itself, the transition
from inanimate molecules to what any of
us would call life remains one of the
great frontiers of biology.
Since life on Earth is so far the only
known example of life in the universe, a
dilemma may simply be that we have no
other examples to compare us with. If we
did, then the life non-life transition
might look downright simple to us.
No doubt the most challenging class of
questions in science is the origin of
things.
So much of what we understand comes from
knowing what something is and what that
something used to be, which allows us to
figure out or at least imagine what
happened in between. Okay, so where did
it all come from? We're quite happy with
our big bang description of cosmic
origins. But actually, the big bang
accounts for what happened only after
the beginning. The beginning itself, and
especially what happened before, remains
the biggest mystery of all.
Why? Because our universe is the only
known example of a universe in the
universe.
And that is the cosmic perspective.