text:
Neapolitan/501 Neapolitan verbs/èssere

èssere

 * English: to be
 * Italian: essere

To form the compound tenses add the auxiliary verb (èssere) + past participle (stato)

1. Indicativo
 * a. presente
 * {| class="wikitable"

 * align="left"|io
 * align="left"|songo (so')
 * align="left"|tu
 * align="left"|sî
 * align="left"|isso/essa
 * align="left"|è (èje, ène)
 * align="left"|nuje
 * align="left"|simmo
 * align="left"|vuje
 * align="left"|site
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|songo (so')
 * }
 * align="left"|site
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|songo (so')
 * }
 * }

 * b. mperfetto
 * {| class="wikitable"

 * align="left"|io
 * align="left"|ero
 * align="left"|tu
 * align="left"|ire
 * align="left"|isso/essa
 * align="left"|era
 * align="left"|nuje
 * align="left"|èramo
 * align="left"|vuje
 * align="left"|ireve
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|erano
 * }
 * align="left"|ireve
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|erano
 * }
 * }

 * c. passato remoto
 * {| class="wikitable"

 * align="left"|io
 * align="left"|fuje
 * align="left"|tu
 * align="left"|fuste
 * align="left"|isso/essa
 * align="left"|fuje
 * align="left"|nuje
 * align="left"|fujemo
 * align="left"|vuje
 * align="left"|fusteve
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|fujeno
 * }
 * align="left"|fusteve
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|fujeno
 * }
 * }

 * d. futuro sémprece
 * {| class="wikitable"

 * align="left"|io
 * align="left"|sarràggio
 * align="left"|tu
 * align="left"|sarràje
 * align="left"|isso/essa
 * align="left"|sarrà
 * align="left"|nuje
 * align="left"|sarràmmo
 * align="left"|vuje
 * align="left"|sarràte
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|sarrànno
 * }
 * align="left"|sarràte
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|sarrànno
 * }
 * }

2. Cungentivo
 * a. mperfetto
 * {| class="wikitable"

 * align="left"|io
 * align="left"|fosse
 * align="left"|tu
 * align="left"|fosse, fusse
 * align="left"|isso/essa
 * align="left"|fosse
 * align="left"|nuje
 * align="left"|fossemo
 * align="left"|vuje
 * align="left"|fusseve
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|fosseno
 * }
 * align="left"|fusseve
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|fosseno
 * }
 * }

3. Cundiziónale
 * a. presente
 * {| class="wikitable"

 * align="left"|io
 * align="left"|sarrìa
 * align="left"|tu
 * align="left"|sarrìsse
 * align="left"|isso/essa
 * align="left"|sarrìa
 * align="left"|nuje
 * align="left"|sarrìammo
 * align="left"|vuje
 * align="left"|sarrìsseve
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|sarrìano
 * }
 * align="left"|sarrìsseve
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|sarrìano
 * }
 * }

4. 'Mperativo
 * a. presente
 * {| class="wikitable"

 * align="left"|tu
 * align="left"|sii, singhe
 * align="left"|vuje
 * align="left"|siate
 * }
 * }

5. Participio passato
 * stato

6. Gerunnio
 * essénno

title: Neapolitan/501 Neapolitan verbs/èssere


text:
Developing A Universal Religion/Introduction to Part Three

What is religion? A religion is a set of beliefs that has proved useful for the very survival of primitive societies, and enforced practices relating to the way an individual relates to society. Law is a codification of these practices which occurred soon after the advent of writing. One of the survival aids that religion brings is a belief that there is something or someone 'out there' monitoring our deeds and misdeeds, and at some point we will be rewarded in some future life. This gives reassurance both to bereaved families and to the brave young men needed to fight wars and die for their cause. It also excuses the excesses of leaders and justifies manifestly unfair use of force, including warmongering, the use of repression, torture and selective killing.

On 12th December 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations. This secular, perhaps humanist document synthesises the best principles of many religions and cultures, and provides a sort 'religious doctrine' of equality,liberty and freedom of expression to which most people might aspire.

Generally religious establishments consider that they have divine and absolute revelation about everything, and are therefore very conservative. Somewhere between these two extreme views, there may be a better religion, that preserves the rich traditions and joyous ceremonies of antiquity - but which also places on everyone those modern rights and responsibilities which are essential for a just, peaceful and exciting future, free of war, famine, disease and injustice. Impossible? Perhaps, but a noble and worthwhile quest that Wikibookians might usefully share anyway.

What better way to commence our search for a universal religion than to examine what is currently known about the universe and its living contents? Using knowledge carefully compiled over many centuries and replacing assumptions with facts—this is, after all, why the majority of us no longer live in caves.

Communal decision-making (moral or practical) is facilitated by valuing the attainment of a communally valued purpose, one which is readily recognized as applicable to all—a universal purpose. Unfortunately, as the next two chapters relate, to the best of our current understanding nothing about either the universe or life necessitates that they be purpose-driven.

Scientists can’t prove that a purpose was necessary for the universe or life to form; neither can they prove that a purpose was not necessary. All they can state is that both the universe and life are present, both change over time, and nothing more than that described by a few laws, principles and theories of physics is needed to explain their existence and ensure their evolution. As Can We Adopt The Universe's Purpose? notes, our current physics is not powerful enough to determine whether or not a purpose existed before our universe began—the only place a predetermining purpose might be found.

However, there is a possible way around the dilemma created by our failure to find a universe-governing purpose. This is discussed in Complexity, Intelligence And Evolution which suggests that a possible consequence of life’s behaviour could be used as a “surrogate” purpose. It turns out that this “consequence” has a number of valuable contributions to offer (it can readily be used to guide moral decision making, for instance—an exercise explored in Determining Moral Behaviour). Purpose concludes by constructing a reason to think that the “possible consequence” might even be a “probable consequence” (which would greatly increase its value, should it be adopted to be the “purpose” that heads a universal religion).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Talk:FHSST Physics/Rectilinear Motion/Speed and Velocity

$$square root$$


text:
User:Mecanismo

Mecanismo is Rui Maciel, a guy from Portugal which happens to be studying to become a civil engineer.

Rui's main areas of interest:
 * Physics
 * Mathematics
 * Computer science

title: User:Mecanismo


text:
User talk:Janne Timmerbacka

Pascal Text
Your Pascal Text on Pascal Computer programming is off topic. You should tell the reader about the advantages/disadvantages of Pascal as a teaching language.

You don't have to redo it all - i.E. you can tell the reader that the Algol based syntax is easier to learn - However the history of Pascal should go to wikipedia.

Please note: I will - after a grace period - remove any off topic article - or parts of it - as I have done before.

--Janne Timmerbacka 21:27, 29 August 2005 (UTC)Thanks. I agree. I just hoped Pascal to be mentioned. I'll remove the text.

 * Don't get me wrong: Pascal is a good teaching language and should be mentioned. You just have to keep the text on topic: "Why learn Pascal?" - "Which paradigms will Pascal teach me?".

title: User talk:Janne Timmerbacka


text:
Chess Opening Theory/1. e4/1...e6/2. d4/2...d5/3. Nc3

= French Defence: Main line = 3.Nc3 is White's most popular move against the French at the top level, and is considered the most challenging option. White develops a piece and keeps the diagonals open for both bishops (unlike 3.Nd2, the Tarrasch Variation), as well as putting pressure on the d5 pawn and protecting the e4 pawn. Black has 4 main options now: Nf6 (The Classical Variation), Bb4 (The Winawer Variation), dxe4 (The Rubinstein Variation), and c5, entering into the Sicilian by some players or French with others with the Marshall Gambit.

Masters
White wins: 36% | Draw: 41% | Black wins: 23%

Lichess
White wins: 50% | Draw: 5% | Black Wins: 45%

Theory table
.


text:
Chess Opening Theory/1. e4/1...e6/2. d4/2...d5/3. Nd2

=French Defence: Tarrasch Variation= The move Nd2 prevents Black from entering the Winawer (3.Nc3 Bb4). The knight on d2 exerts no pressure on d5 and may lead to slower development of white's pieces but the move is solid and leads to games of a more positional nature than its main alternative of 3.Nc3.

Theory table
.


text:
Chess Opening Theory/1. e4/1...e6/2. d4/2...d5/3. e5

=French Defence - Advance Variation= White gains some space advantage immediately, and prevents Black from developing their king's knight to its most natural square f6.

Because Black's position is somewhat cramped at the moment, they usually decide to undermine White's pawn chain on d4/e5, which hinders Black from developing the pieces of their kingside to good squares. This is typically done by attacking the base of White's pawn chain - d4 - by playing 3...c5.

Theory table
.

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5


text:
Chess Opening Theory/1. e4/1...e6/2. d4/2...d5/3. exd5

=Exchange Variation= This is the Exchange Variation of the French Defence. Up until the mid-19th century this was regarded as the main line of the French Defence. The Exchange Variation is a dull, drawish, and static opening, prompting Wilhelm Steinitz to write, "I have never in my life played the French Defense, which is among the dullest of openings." It was only around the 1860s and 1870s that the variations arising after 3.Nc3, 3.Nd2, and 3.e5 became popular.

The Exchange Variation leads to a symmetrical pawn structure. Both sides often develop symmetrically, while giving no room for imbalance in the game, which is why the opening is so drawish. Players who want a draw only will often employ the Exchange Variation.

Theory table
.


text:
Talk:Computer Programming/Archive3

Unique naming convention
Hi, I assembled the list of Wikibooks. Unfortunately, Computer programming pages intermingle with programming languages, and it is not easy to attribute the pages to a book, without double counting (for example, the listing contains the books of Programming:C, Programming:Ada, etc, so I can not easily separate out pages that are connected to the theory of programming). If somebody is still working on this book, please consider a consistent and unique naming convention.

Please leave "Programming:" only to the programming languages, and put all chapters belonging to "Computer programming" either to "Computer programming:..." or, since subpages have been activated on Wikibooks recently, use

Computer programming Computer programming/Statements Computer programming/Control statements Computer programming/Structured programming ...

(subpages give additional navigational advantages, e.g. an automatic link to the parent page, etc.)

Logged in users can easily move pages by the "move" command. Thanks! --Andreas 06:23, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Yes, I was thinking about that as well - And indeed, subpages seem to be the way to go. --Krischik 08:36, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Excuse me. Firstly, we need to agree on a Wikibooks wide convention FIRST. Second, you can't just act on one proposal. Solicit others point of view FIRST. That is what Andreas was doing. Dysprosia 09:11, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * At least there are two users who thought about converting "Computer programming" more into a book again (it still looks a bit like a bookshelf, with all the Computer science TOC copied here as well - to my opinion unnecessarily since they belong to a different book). I'd suggest to put the "real" table of contents to the top, with the table linking to other programming languages a little bit lower, and if desired a wiki link to other books of interest, but no need for the inclusion of other book's table of contents.
 * The other question of more general interest is a Wikibooks wide convention on page organization. We should probably open a discussion page specifically on that - or is there already some around that I am not aware of? The activation of subpages has been praised some time ago, but only some books adapt this practise. The majority of books still have the "Bookname:..." convention, and some older ones have "...(Biology)" (which I think can be ruled out for a future recommendation). So the question is ":" or "/". Where should we open a prominent discussion page? I don't deny that I am in favor of a gradual change to the "/" subpage style... --Andreas 13:07, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * I support the use of subpages project-wide. For discussing it I think we could use Wikibooks talk:Naming conventions or Wikibooks:Staff lounge. ManuelGR 13:52, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * I'm sorry, I'm just getting a little sick of people just pulling away and doing their own thing without really discussing it. We need to be much more consistent across books. Dysprosia 06:09, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Functional programming
Just a minor thought occurred to me... the same technique we use (templates) to share text between programming books can be applied to specific paradigms of programming. For example, functional languages like Programming:Haskell, {bad link|Programming:Caml}} and Programming:Scheme have a lot of things in common. Perhaps we could make a set of Computer Programming/Functional programming templates as well -- Kowey 12:35, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * shure - that was the idea - write fundamentals once - use them for many languages. And the template technique does not work in one directions only - Computer Programming/Control was first written for Ada only and then generalised. BTW: What is your opinion on the Hierachy_naming_scheme discussion? --Krischik 12:51, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Perl & PHP
Well User:81.180.101.1 added Perl & PHP today - but not a single "yes" link. Should we give him/her a week (to the 28.04.2005) to provide some articles and then remove the columns again?

--Krischik 06:02, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Computer Programming/Archive3


text:
Chess Opening Theory/1. d4/1...d5/2. e4

= Blackmar-Diemer Gambit 2. e4 =

2. e4
White offers their e4 pawn in exchange for quick development and open lines. At the professional level this move is considered somewhat suspect, but Black must be careful if they choose to take the pawn as there are many traps in this opening. 2 ...dxe4, accepting the pawn, is the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit. Black has three ways to decline the gambit.
 * e6 transposes to the French Defence
 * c6 transposes to the Caro-Kann Defence
 * Nc6 transposes to the Nimzowitsch Defence
 * c5 is a largely unexplored countergambit.

Theory table
.

'''1. d4 d5 2. e4'''

title: Chess Opening Theory/1. d4/1...d5/2. e4


text:
Chess Opening Theory/1. e4/1...e6/2. d4/2...c5

=Franco-Benoni Defence= The Franco-Benoni Defence, also known as Franco-Sicilian Defence is a rarely seen opening and can be considered surprising. Nf3 transposes into a Sicilian Defence line whereas d5 transposes into a Benoni-styled line.

Theory table
.
 * 1.e4 e6 2.d4 c5


text:
Cookbook:Causa Rellena con Pollo (Peruvian Layered Potato and Chicken)

| Cuisine of Peru

Ingredients

 * 10 medium potatoes (yellow, new, or red are a good choice)
 * 1 pound of shredded boiled chicken meat
 * 100 g mayonnaise
 * 25 g butter
 * 2 cloves garlic
 * Salt
 * Pepper
 * Lettuce
 * 3 hard boiled eggs
 * Black olives

Procedure

 * 1) Cook and peel potatoes. Allow to cool, then mash.
 * 2) In a bowl combine the chicken, mayonnaise, onion, salt, and pepper.
 * 3) Line a deep dish with plastic wrap, or place a molding cylinder on a plate.
 * 4) Add the mashed potatoes to form a bed about 1 cm tall at the bottom.
 * 5) Add a second layer of 1 cm of the chicken mixture evenly over the potato.
 * 6) Top the chicken mixture with a final layer of potato, forming a sandwich of chicken inside two layers of potato.
 * 7) Unmold or remove the cylinder.
 * 8) Garnish with lettuce and mayonnaise.
 * 9) Cut the hard boiled eggs in discs and place on top. Add black olives, if desired.
 * 10) This dish can be served slightly cold.

Notes, tips, and variations

 * Mashed potatoes can be prepared with a mix of olive oil and butter and adding one tablespoon of lemon juice. You can compensate lemon with salt. Don't add milk.
 * You can replace the chicken with a can of tuna mixed with mayonnaise and fine chopped onion. Serve this variation fresh only.


text:
Wikijunior:Solar System/Uranus/Ariel

Ariel is a moon of Uranus. The first and only observations of Ariel were made by Voyager 2 during its January 1986 flyby of Uranus. Only the Southern hemisphere was photographed, since the moon's south pole was pointed towards the Sun.

How big is Ariel?
Ariel is about 1157.8 km wide.

What is its surface like?
The surface of Ariel does not have many craters. It has a huge network of fault canyons and liquid water outflows over its surface. It appears to shine because of its reflecting surface.

How long is a day on Ariel?
One day on Ariel is equal to 2.52 days on Earth.

How long is its orbit around Uranus?
One Orbit around Uranus is also equal to 2.52 days.

What is it made of?
Ariel is made of roughly 50% water ice, 30% silicate rock, and 20% methane ice, and it appears to have regions of fresh frost in places.

How much would Ariel's gravity pull on me?
Newtons describe how hard gravity is pulling you down. On Earth, if you weigh 51 kilograms or 112 pounds, your weight is 500 newtons. We only use newtons for some special purposes, when we are really interested in how hard we push down on something because gravity is pulling us.

Your weight in newtons would be less on Ariel, only about 0.27 times what it is on Earth. To find your weight in newtons as you stand on Ariel, just take your weight on Earth, and if that weight is in kilograms, multiply it by 2.65. If that weight is in pounds, multiply it by 1.2 to get newtons. But then you'll have to add in the weight of your spacesuit as well, because that is pressing down on the surface just like you are.

Who is it named after?
Ariel is named after a sylph, a creature made of air, in Alexander Pope's poem Rape of the Lock.

How was it discovered?
Ariel was discovered on October 24, 1851 by William Lassell. He also discovered Umbriel at the same time.

Wikijunior Sonnensystem/ Uranus/ Ariel

title: Wikijunior:Solar System/Uranus/Ariel


text:
Developing A Universal Religion/The Universe

Most of our discoveries about the universe have come through collecting and studying electromagnetic radiations. For many centuries, visible light waves were the only kind of radiation we could detect, and we could not do much with them until Galileo constructed his telescopes. But the electromagnetic spectrum holds much more information than that contained in the light waves visible to our eyes. The full spectrum ranges from very long radio waves, microwaves and the infrared, through the rainbow’s hues, to ultraviolet, X-rays, and highly energetic gamma rays. Our ability to understand what is happening throughout the universe depends upon our ability to invent, build and utilize instruments able to gather in these waves, remove spurious background noise, then to amplify, analyze and make sense of the minute differences so revealed. The past few decades have opened many electromagnetic inspection windows, and the next will undoubtedly open many more. Thus, what follows in this chapter will certainly need to be updated as we learn more, but the chapter’s major premises will likely remain valid, for they are supported by many millions of solidly based observations.

Let us begin this explanation of what has been discovered about the universe by describing just a little of what everyone can readily see. We will then use the laws of physics and the “causality principle” to extrapolate backwards in time; this reveals how things must have been in the past to cause them to be as we see them today.

 * 1) /What We See In The Sky/
 * 2) /The Expanding Universe/
 * 3) /What Happened After The Big Bang/
 * 4) /The Life Of A Typical Star/
 * 5) /The Earth/
 * 6) /What Started It All?/
 * /Summary/


text:
Developing A Universal Religion/The Universe/The Expanding Universe

Two competing theories quickly emerged to explain the expanding universe phenomenon: the Steady State theory and the Big Bang theory. The first postulated that the universe is self-sustaining, and claimed that what we see today is what will be seen in billions of years time; galaxies move apart, but the total picture remains the same. According to the Steady State theory, the stars that are moving outwards are being replaced by new ones that are perpetually being formed out of cosmic dust. This dust is being created from atoms, the theory went, that themselves are being continuously created from cosmic energy. (We cannot observe this creation, because the theory predicts that it need only occur at a rate of about one atom per 500 cubic meters, every 1000 years, which is far too slow to be detected.)

In contrast, the Big Bang explanation stated that the universe began with an explosion, and that everything within has been moving apart since that moment, with the intervening space expanding and cooling as it proceeds. In this theory, everything was created during, or shortly after, “the bang,” rather than slowly and continuously, atom by atom.

Some of the discussions reported in the press when these theories were announced, shortly after the second world war provided a stimulating intellectual alternative to the dreary task of becoming formally educated. At that time, I favoured the Steady State theory because I couldn’t understand how everything could come from nothing in one big burst. Creation seemed slightly more feasible if it happened very slowly, and I thought that perhaps the atoms being created came from energy released as the matter in receding galaxies became stretched further and further apart. The Steady State theory also seemed more appealing philosophically, because if the universe continued forever, one would never have a beginning to explain.

However, three observations eventually dismissed the Steady State theory. First, if the universe did start with a bang, then there should still be some trace evidence of this explosion to be found. And there is; it has been heard since radio astronomy first began. Everywhere one searches, in addition to the electromagnetic information received from stars and galaxies, there is a constant hiss of background radiation. This hiss comes from energy that remains (unconverted into matter) from the originating Big Bang.

Second, the universe does not remain the same over time, as the Steady State theory requires; it changes as it becomes older. This was discovered when quasar locations were established upon a four-dimensional map of the universe. This showed them to exist only at great distances from our system, signifying that they were present billions of years ago but no longer exist today. Astronomers also find (by searching far and near in distance, and so effectively far and near in time) that galaxies tend to change their shape as they age.

Third, scientists have calculated the variety and abundance of chemical elements that should have been formed following the Big Bang, and their calculations predict exactly the ratios that are found to exist in space. Furthermore, the particular mixture predicted by the Big Bang theory (and corroborated by observation) is quite different from the mixture that the Steady State theory predicts.

Various other kinds of evidence support the Big Bang theory, and it rules the roost today. The creating Bang is calculated to have occurred about 13.7 billion years ago.

While no cosmologist doubts that our universe is expanding, there has been much debate about whether it will continue to expand forever. Should this be the case, our universe will end up as a diffuse, dark, frigid, dead junkyard, with no energy differences left to power change. If, however, the attractive gravitational forces are strong enough, the universe’s current expansion will be slowed down, stopped, then reversed. This reversal would cause everything to be pulled tighter and tighter together, and it would all eventually be gathered into one gigantic black hole, presumably to continue shrinking until it reverted back to whence it came.

This uncertainty about the universe’s future may have been resolved by measurements taken over the last five or so years. Measurements of the brightness and red shift of distant supernovae (see next section) yield the recession speed of the universe when it was young. Comparisons of that speed with the recession speed shown by nearby galaxies reveals that the universe’s rate of expansion is increasing, not slowing down. (It is currently thought that the slightly repulsive gravitational force of the “vacuum energy” of empty space may be causing this acceleration.)

 * Return to The Universe, Introduction
 * ../What Happened After The Big Bang/


text:
Developing A Universal Religion/The Universe/What Happened After The Big Bang

The Big Bang theory postulates that the universe came into being when what amounts to an infinitely large amount of energy suddenly appeared as an infinitesimally small speck (fittingly called a singularity). Where this energy came from—no one knows. How so much energy could occupy next to zero volume—no one knows. One theory postulates the existence of another universe, vastly bigger than the one we inhabit and hidden in additional space/time dimensions, and suggests that it could have created and fed the singularity. This background universe could be periodically “blowing bubbles” that inflate into universes. Our (relatively small, on this scale) universe could have originated within one of these bubbles. Superstring Theory (see ../../Gödel’s Theorem, General Systems Theory, and The Conservation Laws/) supports the existence of many universes (of which ours is one), each being formed from, and eventually returned to, empty space.

Regardless of what actually occurred to “begin our universe,” and what was needed before this event to cause it to happen, scientists can account for what is seen today simply by postulating that everything came from a single point in one Big Bang then applying some known laws of physics.

Rather than making guesses about what might have happened beyond and before our universe began (guesses that can never be substantiated—see ../What Started It All?/ of this chapter), let us start with what is generally accepted—a Big Bang/Inflationary origin to our universe. This theory is able to explain much that we observe, and it yields accurate predictions, hallmark properties of a good scientific theory. Assuming that the laws of physics as we know them today also applied almost immediately following the Bang, we can reconstruct the history of the universe. This has been carried out by various people over the past fifty years, with modifications and revisions being made each time someone was able to improve the fit between astronomical observations and theory. Today, scientists think that something very like the following occurred.

Immediately upon the original insertion of energy, time in this continuum began, and space was created by separating energy components. This was followed by an extremely rapid expansion. Starting about 10 of a second after the Bang, and lasting until about 10 of a second, this minute bubble of pure energy that was to become our universe inflated to 1050 times its previous size.

For the first one hundred seconds or so following the Bang, only energy (in various forms of radiation) could have existed. Continued expansion and further cooling of this hot dense ball of energy continued until, after about 300,000 years, the temperature was low enough (about 3,000°C) for atoms of hydrogen (and helium, the next lightest element) to remain intact. From this time onward the universe would contain matter.

These atoms of hydrogen and helium continued to move apart, and the temperature of the universe continued to drop. Gravitational forces pulled wisps of atoms closer together, forming tremendous, irregularly shaped clouds, and these eventually further condensed to form many giant gas balls. Condensation continued, with the gases at the centre of each ball forming first black holes, then supermassive black holes. Electrically charged gases (spiralling ever faster and faster around these holes before being swallowed) emitted intense electromagnetic radiation fields that pushed the surrounding gases away. Clouds of these gases then themselves condensed to form additional smaller balls. As gravity pulled the gases in each of these balls tighter together they began to heat up. Eventually the temperature within each became so high that thermonuclear reactions occurred, and the gas balls began to emit light. These high-temperature, hydrogen-gas balls, are called stars. The large collections of stars that rotate around supermassive black holes are called galaxies.

 * Return to The Universe, Introduction
 * ../The Life Of A Typical Star/


text:
Developing A Universal Religion/The Universe/The Life Of A Typical Star

Stars contain huge amounts of hydrogen, and the gravitational forces near their centre are extremely high. This creates a pressure which pushes the hydrogen nuclei closer and closer, eventually fusing pairs of them together, creating helium. Since one helium nucleus has slightly less mass than the two hydrogen nuclei that formed it, the surplus mass has to be released. This occurs, but the release is not in the form of a particle of matter; the mass difference is radiated away as energy, and many such fusings quickly raise the sun’s core temperature (which stabilizes at about twenty million degrees Celsius). Physicists replicate this process in hydrogen bombs, and they are attempting to do the same thing in the laboratory. (Here the biggest problem is how to contain and control the high temperatures involved —about 100 million degrees, or over five times the temperature of the sun’s core, in some research reactors.)

The average star today burns for about ten billion years. As a star’s hydrogen continues to form helium, its core gradually shrinks. This causes it to become hotter, and its nuclear fusions become more complex. Through fusions, helium is converted into carbon and oxygen, then into other elements (those in approximately the first quarter of the periodic table). Further core shrinkage eventually creates enough radiation to induce a big expansion of the outer layers, and stars that are about the size of our sun become red giants, enveloping any orbiting planets in incandescent gases. Eventually, fusion can no longer be sustained in the core, and red giants shrink, lose their outer layers of gases, and become compact white dwarfs. This is likely to be the fate of our sun and its planets, some six billion years in the future.

A number of stars are large enough to avoid this kind of relatively slow death. Their extra mass creates higher core temperatures and heavier elements are formed. However, forming nuclei of elements beyond iron requires an input of energy (because extra energy is needed to hold together the many mutually repulsive protons such nuclei contain). This reduces the energy released during fusion to a point where it can no longer counterbalance gravitational attraction, and the star collapses. This sudden implosion releases tremendous amounts of energy and everything immediately heats up again. This, in turn, rapidly fuses many of the existing elements into the larger and more complex elements that exist beyond iron (over eighty of them; copper, silver, gold and mercury, for example). The core's raging furnace builds in intensity and soon explodes, scattering the star’s chemical elements into space. Some massive stars undergo several cycles of explosions and collapses. (Astronomers occasionally witness these events; each explosion is termed a nova.) Other giant stars explode completely in one detonation; what is then seen is called a supernova. Both appear abruptly as bright patches of light in the sky, often intense enough to be visible in daylight, occurring in the spot formerly occupied by a star.

Observers find and study one or two new novae each year, and witness gigantic supernovae blossoming within our galaxy, the Milky Way, an average of twice a century. In the ten billion years of our galaxy’s existence, about two hundred million supernovae have spewed out the chemical elements we know from spectroscopic evidence to be present throughout its volume. The dark patches (mentioned earlier in this chapter), observed within interstellar and intergalactic space, are due to the presence of vast clouds of these minute dust particles. This dust (altogether amounting to hundreds of times more matter than is contained within the total of every galaxy’s collection of stars and planets) is mostly composed of the elements formed and ejected during novae and supernovae explosions. These particles absorb and obscure light from the stars and galaxies that lie beyond, and it is the absence of this light that produces regions that appear to be dark.

The visible universe is estimated to contain some 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) galaxies, and an average galaxy (such as ours) accommodates a collection of some 2-300,000,000,000 (200-300 billion) stars. Thus, there are twenty to thirty thousand billion billion (i.e., 20-30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, that is, 20-30 sextillion, or 2-3x1022) stars all told in our universe.

As mentioned, stars of all descriptions have been found. Some, only about a half-million years old, have been photographed via the infrared radiation they emit. These newly formed “baby” stars already show a spin (imparted by the kinetic energy of condensing gases as they are drawn into the star by gravitational attraction), which the star retains for its lifetime. Observations suggest that about half of all newly formed stars are also accompanied by a rotating disk of gases, particles, dust and debris. Matter that is not pulled into the star is gradually pushed away by the star’s radiation and most eventually disperse into space. However, gravity also pulls some of the disk’s matter and dust together to form aggregates; the largest of these we call planets.

The brightness and remoteness of stars generally prevent us from directly observing any planets that might orbit them. However, the presence of planets can be inferred by various techniques, and some nearby stars are now known to have orbiting bodies. One way to determine if a star has one or more planetary companions is to measure its wobble (caused because the orbiting bodies together rotate about their common centre of mass, i.e., the star no longer rotates about its own centre and therefore looks as if it is “wobbling.” A similar wobble can occur when a car tire is “unbalanced.”) Another way to find planets is to look for lensing effects, when light from distant stars becomes bent due to gravitational pull as it passes close to large masses, such as those of giant (e.g., Jupiter-size or greater) planets. Astronomers also look for emission intensity variations and dark spots transiting the face of stars (caused by planets crossing in front of a star and so preventing some of its light from reaching the observing telescopes). The presence of rings of matter surrounding some stars gives observers yet another way to infer that planets have been (or are being) formed about a star, and circular gaps within such rings of dust almost certainly mean that planets are present. (Clumps of particles within a ring gravitationally sweep up additional dust as they travel around a star; this causes the orbiting bodies to gradually enlarge and leaves the gaps that are seen. These dust aggregates may ultimately become large enough to form asteroids and planets. Most stars, including our own, lose much of their dust halo due to this process [as well as due to pressure from the star’s radiation] in the first 400 million years following their birth.) Planets may also be sought and even studied by examining the doppler-shifted starlight scattered by their atmospheres. Over one hundred exoplanets (as planets outside our solar system are called) have been found to date, a number that is being added to every few weeks. Undoubtedly, with time and as astronomers refine their planet-finding techniques, many more will be discovered.

 * Return to The Universe, Introduction
 * ../The Earth/


text:
Developing A Universal Religion/The Universe/The Earth

The Earth was formed (as were all of the planets in our solar system) from the aggregates that orbited our sun approximately 4.6 billion y.a.—less than half a billion years after the sun itself formed (and about 9 billion years after the Big Bang). As it was forming, the Earth’s accumulating mass was constantly bombarded by matter-adding meteorites, comets and huge planetesimals (mini-planets), and this, together with the energy released by radioactive decay of the heavy elements that settled to its core, kept our planet in a molten state for its first two or three hundred million years. The Earth’s solid surface crust formed about four and a quarter billion y.a.

Today, our planet consists chiefly of a liquid iron alloy core (at a temperature of approximately 5,000°C ), covered by a mantle of hardened oxides that float on the core’s surface. The core is slowly cooling as convection currents and eddies in its upper layers transfer heat into the mantle. These currents also cause the Earth’s continents to drift, almost imperceptibly, but constantly. In several places, subterranean tectonic plates bump into each other, inevitably pushing one under the other. The uppermost plate (usually the lightest one) lifts to form mountains, with rifts, or valleys, forming in between. The plate pushed underneath remelts to form magma, some of which may find its way to the surface again through volcanoes.

Most of the water that covers three-quarters of the Earth’s surface arrived in the form of comets early in our planet’s life, but another 500 tons or so is added daily as the Earth sweeps up space-dust (much of which is water ). Water is ubiquitous throughout the universe simply because its constituents (two atoms of hydrogen, and one atom of oxygen) are elemental and universal—hydrogen being the first element formed following the Big Bang, and oxygen being one of the elements produced as stars evolve, and later thrown into space as they nova.

As we doubtless remember from our school days, the sun’s radiation evaporates water (that then condenses to form the clouds that produce rain, lightning and thunder). The sun’s energy also heats the land and sea; temperature differences between these create winds and drive the water cycle that sustains life on land.

More than three billion years of continuously varying weather has eroded the Earth’s ever-changing mountains, turning their rock into the sand, dust and silt that have become major constituents of our planet’s soil and the bottoms of its lakes, rivers and oceans. Silt and material on the ocean floors, compressed by the weight of water and accumulated matter above, has formed layers of sedimentary rock that trap and hold evidence of the conditions and life forms that existed from the recent past to many hundreds of millions of years ago. Ice locked at depths within glaciers provides ancient liquids and gases that scientists have collected and analyzed, further adding to what is known about how our planet aged and changed. These sources have also told us much of what is known about how life evolved on our planet.

 * Return to The Universe, Introduction
 * ../What Started It All?/


text:
Developing A Universal Religion/The Universe/What Started It All?

Although we can conjecture, we are never likely to find out what caused the Big Bang; that is, what created our universe in the first place. The reason this is so is to be found in at least two places: Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, and General Systems theory. These are not too hard to understand in outline, as the brief summary given in the next two paragraphs aims to show. (A little more information is provided in two postscripts to this chapter .)

In his Incompleteness Theorem, Kurt Gödel proved that no system can contain all of the information needed to answer every question that can be posed from within that system. No matter how much we understand about the system we are examining from within, logical paradoxes will always exist. Asking what started our universe is posing just such a logical paradox.

General Systems theory states that all systems are either open or closed. Open systems interact with (and obtain what they need to continue their existence from) their supersystem. Closed systems are cut-off from the outside, and no energy of any form (e.g., radiation, matter, or information) can enter or leave such a system. All our current theories suggest that our universe is a closed system, and, if this is so, we will never be able to obtain information from outside.

As humans, we try and find the root of every happening. We can almost propose a theory and explanation as to what started most things that exist on our planet and also to visible objects within our system. It is logical throughout history and the start of time, that every occurrence was the result of chain reaction event. The big question is, what started the big bang. Nothing can create itself or other entities without something else existing before it to start that chain reaction.

 * Return to The Universe, Introduction
 * ../Summary/


text:
Developing A Universal Religion/The Universe/Summary

The universe is not quite as mysterious as it once appeared to be. Cosmologists and astronomers now understand a great deal about its past, present and future, as well as what creates and controls its contents. Using computers and instruments to analyze photons collected by different types of telescopes, it is possible to infer what was likely to have been happening when these photons were created, and even what energies and matters were encountered in their journey through space and time. As we progress in this manner, we find that the science of cosmology depends upon—in fact, mostly is—the physics of energy and matter. In other words, the behaviour of the gigantic is controlled by the properties of the minuscule, the ultimate test of reality’s rational conformity to causality.

However, there appears to be no method of peeking through a singularity. If this is so, then no future beings, wherever they might live in the universe, will ever discover what caused the Big Bang, or what existed before time in this universe began.

This could be where a god once lived—or even lives now. If one exists anywhere at all, then this is the only place that modern science would position him—before the beginning, and beyond any possibility of interfering with the present. Certainly, there is proving to be no physical need for a god’s intervention within our universe. Once a universe possessing the properties we are discovering has been created, it will simply evolve in the manner our telescopes reveal, with stars, galaxies and planets (and life, as the next chapter explains) being formed along the way. A god’s influence is seemingly not needed in the day-to-day operation of the physical universe. But isn’t that to be expected of a creation if God Himself designed it?

Well, so much for the universe. It started, and it evolves as time goes by. We don’t know why it began or even if its existence requires a cause, but we do know a lot about how and why it evolves, and the forces that regulate its development.

It is time to turn our attention to the phenomenon of life, and review what scientists can tell us about it. Two questions are most important to our discussions: how did life begin, and how has it given rise to the forms we see today? The next chapter will review the answers that have been found.

 * Return to The Universe, Introduction
 * Life, Introduction

(Three postscripts to this chapter titled Gödel’s Theorem, General Systems Theory and The Conservation Laws are to be found at the end of this part.)


text:
Investing/Tax advantaged investing

There are three types of tax advantages that one can possibly gain when investing.

 * Tax Reduction Now
 * Tax Deferred Growth
 * Tax Free Withdrawals

Tax Reduction allows one to take the investment and deduct directly from the income reported to the IRS.

Tax Deferred Growth allows someone to postpone paying taxes on the capital gains, interest, or dividends from an investment until one takes a withdrawal.

Tax Free Withdrawal is the ability to withdraw funds from an account or sell an investment without paying taxes on the gains within the investment.

Other topics that are important:

 * Marginal Tax Rates vs. Average Tax Rates
 * Capital Gains - Long Term vs. Short Term
 * Dividend Tax Rates
 * Interest Tax Rates - Corporate, Municipal, Federal
 * Real Estate Depreciation and effects on taxes

Types of Tax Advantaged Accounts
 * Traditional IRAs
 * Roth IRAs
 * Simple IRAs
 * SEP-IRAs
 * 401k Plans
 * Roth 401ks
 * Defined Benefit Plans
 * Profit Sharing Plans
 * Annuities
 * Life Insurance Wrappers

title: Investing/Tax advantaged investing


text:
Developing A Universal Religion/The Universe/What We See In The Sky

Who has not looked at the sky on a starry, cloudless night and felt the wonder of living on a planet surrounded by so many mysterious shining points of light? Two thousand years ago, many thought that most of these were merely copies of each other, and that they were positioned on one of several “shells” which surrounded the Earth—a very uninspiring arrangement. We now know how incorrect that view was, and any reasonably good backyard telescope can provide hints about how our new perspective was obtained. It can be seen that these points of light are not all the same: many vary in brightness, some possess tinges of colour, and, while most hardly ever change their position relative to one another, a few move about from one night to the next, and the whole rotates with the time and season.

Even four hundred years ago it was not generally known that the Earth and planets are satellites of the sun. Although the Greek astronomer Aristarchus (around 250 BCE) had guessed as much, most preferred to believe otherwise. The Catholic Church had adopted Aristotle’s cosmology, and it maintained that three concentric spheres or “shells” encompassed the Earth, with the sun and moon moving on the surface of the first sphere, the planets moving on the second, and all of the stars being at rest on the third. This conformed to the notion that a perfect heaven awaited above (while volcanoes and hot springs were said to prove that hell and brimstone lay beneath). There is a well-known story of how Galileo, after careful use of a telescope he had constructed, declared in 1616 that Copernicus was right and that the Earth and planets did revolve around the sun; this led to the Church placing Galileo under house arrest for the rest of his life. However, the increasing use of telescopes gradually altered popular opinion, and by the middle of the seventeenth century most astronomers agreed that the sun-centred description was correct.

A six-inch telescope and some careful scrutiny will uncover numerous small, fuzzy patches of light in the night sky. Careful observation at higher magnifications shows that these are actually collections of stars, or galaxies. Galaxies, typically comprising thousands of millions of stars, mostly appear in one of three arrangements: elliptical, spiral or irregular. Astronomers further find (through careful examination of photographs taken using giant telescopes) that galaxies themselves collect together in groups and clusters, and that these clumps form even bigger collections. The size of these massive groupings (called superclusters and galaxy walls) can exceed many hundreds of millions of light-years.

Astronomers have also observed several pairs of galaxies colliding. This sounds catastrophic, but it produces nowhere near the (relative) damage caused, for example, when comets or asteroids crash into planets. This is because galaxies are vast (which is another way of saying that they are mostly empty space) and one galaxy can pass right through another with relatively few direct impacts (orbital disruptions would be much more likely to happen).

A number of dark patches are also noticeable in the night sky, areas which seem to be devoid of light-emitting stars. One well-known dark region can be seen in the Great Orion Nebula forming part of Orion’s sword and lies some 1500 light-years away. (The reason such dark patches exist is explained in ../The Life Of A Typical Star/.)

Stars, galaxies, superclusters, and other objects in the universe have been photographed, numbered, catalogued and intensively studied for decades. Their brilliance, variabilities, emissions, compositions, movements, ages, and much else, have been repeatedly measured by a wide range of very powerful instruments. Over years of study, it has been found that most objects and phenomena can be grouped into categories, and these have been given names (for example, white and brown dwarfs, red giants, neutron stars, gas giants, black holes, Cepheids, pulsars, quasars, novae, supernovae, and so on). Much has been learned in just a few decades about the nature and properties of members of each category, but a great deal more remains to be discovered.

By studying the variations in intensity of emitted radiation, astronomers have found how to measure the distance between Earth and a particular kind of varying star called a Cepheid variable. By associating these stars with galaxies, it has been determined that the light from the most distant galaxies has been travelling for more than thirteen billion years! This means that, when viewing those galaxies, we are looking at something that is about 12x1022 kilometres away (calculated by multiplying the distance light travels in one year by 13 billion), and, perhaps more significantly, it means we are seeing light that was emitted from them as they existed over thirteen billion years ago. To see these galaxies as they exist today, we would have to wait another thirteen billion years for their current emissions to reach Earth (or we would have to instantaneously travel 12x1022 kilometres to where they are, an impossibility). Knowing how far an object is from Earth has allowed astronomers to “look into the past”—the farther away a celestial entity is, the older the light we are seeing. Thus, the properties of distant objects can be examined and compared to closer (i.e., younger) emitting bodies. Such analyses have led to many meaningful discoveries about the origins of our universe and its evolution over time.

Some eighty years ago astronomers discovered that the spectral emissions from all distant objects are displaced, i.e., that their spectral dark bands have been shifted from their normal position. All galactic radiation (except that coming from a few, nearby, galaxies) shows spectral lines that have been moved toward the red end of the spectrum; this has been termed the “red shift.” This phenomenon has been found to occur in every direction we look, and means that all distant objects are moving away from us. In fact, the farther away an object is, the faster it recedes.

Unfortunately, for those who would have otherwise, this does not make us unique. Although it seems to place the Earth (and therefore humanity) at the centre of the universe, this is not the case. The true explanation is that everything is moving away from everything else, because the intervening space is expanding rather than the objects themselves moving. (They do move, of course, just as our planet moves around our sun. Our sun travels around the centre of our galaxy, and galaxies themselves move. But galactic recession is due to space expansion. Space expansion is perhaps most clearly visualized using the analogy of specks of dirt on the surface of a balloon. When the balloon is inflated, the distance between each speck increases, and those furthest apart separate at the greatest speed, but no speck is more centrally positioned than any other.)

Finding that billions of galaxies exist, each containing billions of stars, has been exciting. Finding that they are speeding away from each other was at first unbelievable, then astonishing, and it immediately claimed the attention of all cosmologists. This galactic recession (or expansion of the universe, which is another way of saying the same thing) was so fundamental and far-reaching an observation that few astronomers could concentrate upon any other issue—an explanation had to be found.

 * Return to The Universe, Introduction
 * ../The Expanding Universe/


text:
Neapolitan/sites

Wikipedia

 * Neapolitan Wikipedia
 * The English Wikipedia's Neapolitan language page

Dictionaries

 * Neapolitan glossary on Wiktionary
 * Grammar primer and extensive vocabulary for the Neapolitan dialect of Torre del Greco
 * French-Neapolitan downloadable and searchable online dictionary
 * Italian-Neapolitan-Italian dictionary

Other resources

 * Proverbs and sayings (English translations)
 * Proverbs and saying (Italian transations)
 * More Proverbs and sayings (Italian translations)
 * Ethnologue World linguistic classification
 * Library of Congress iso639 language code
 * Istituto linguistico campano Campanian language institute (in Italian)
 * Neapolitan language introduction
 * Interactive Map of languages in Italy
 * Accademia Napulitana
 * Neapolitan on-line radio station
 * Online weekly in Neapolitan
 * Napoletanità- Neapolitan language and culture (in Italian)
 * Books and poems in Neapolitan free for download
 * Bookstore offering many books in and about Neapolitan and about Naples and Napoletanità in general (in Italian)

Napoletano/Siti Internet

title: Neapolitan/sites


text:
Developing A Universal Religion/Life

Life’s development has been much harder to definitively trace than that of the universe. This is because biology’s countless combinations and permutations are exceedingly convoluted compared to the linearity of physics or the predictability of chemistry.

Experimental physics is often conducted by holding all variables constant, then determining the effects of changing just one. This procedure, together with the universe’s constraints (which limit the number of particles [such as protons or electrons] there are to investigate and the number of ways they can behave) has simplified the discovery of many of the universe’s secrets. Physicists now extrapolate with confidence from present to past, from past to future, and from here to the other side of the universe.

Chemistry is somewhat more complex than physics, because there are over a hundred chemical elements. This relatively large number means that millions of different combinations (as molecules and compounds) can exist. This complexity is being conquered, however, as demonstrated by the near-routine formulation of new and improved fabrics, explosives, alloys, drugs, plastics, and innumerable other products.

Progress in biology, on the other hand, has been considerably slower until just recently. Life’s ability to mutate and change over successive generations has meant that investigators cannot simply extrapolate backwards to determine what previously existed, nor look forward and predict what might result.

Most of our knowledge about life’s history has been obtained from fossils and preserved remnants of past life forms, but two factors greatly complicate the task. First, biotic matter provides food for other living things, so most of it never makes its way into the future to be studied. Second, the extensive (and ongoing) geophysical changes that the Earth has undergone during its more than four billion years of existence has left the story-telling remains of life’s progress fragmented and incomplete. However, enough evidence exists and has been found for scientists to trace life’s gross history on this planet. Moreover, each year new fossils and new facts (particularly genetic) about past and present inter- and intra-species relationships are discovered. These fill knowledge gaps and build confidence in the accuracy of what has already been deduced. What biologists now generally accept is related in the following pages.

 * 1) /Possible Origins Of Life On Earth/
 * 2) /Development Of Life On Earth/
 * 3) /Evolution/
 * 4) /The Probability That Life Exists Elsewhere/
 * 5) /Intelligent Life/
 * /Summary/

title: Developing A Universal Religion/Life


text:
Developing A Universal Religion/Life/Possible Origins Of Life On Earth

One of the first theories to become widely known that described how life may have begun on this planet was proposed in the 1920’s independently by Aleksandr Oparin, a Russian biochemist, and J. B. S. Haldane, a British biologist. They pointed out that some four billion years ago, conditions in the Earth’s shallower seas and oceans would have resembled a chemical vat. This vat must have held a variety of ingredients that would have been warmed by sunlight, constantly stirred by tides and winds, bathed in ultraviolet radiation from the sun, and intermittently subjected to electrical discharges from thunder storms. This so-called called “primordial soup” would inevitably have become more complex over time, as interactions (mostly chemical) between the constituents occurred. Eventually, it would likely contain many of the molecules and compounds needed to create some elemental forms of life.

Stanley Miller, under Harold Urey at the University of Chicago in 1953, recreated many of these conditions in the laboratory. Together they subjected methane, ammonia and hydrogen (gases that very probably existed on this planet in its early years, and that are still present in abundance on Jupiter and Saturn) to electrical sparks in a sealed sterile flask. On later analyzing the flask’s contents, they found many of the amino acids from which life’s building blocks—proteins—are built. Similar experiments have since yielded molecular components of proteins that regulate carbohydrate and fat formation. In other words, some of the major constituents of life have been fabricated from scratch in the laboratory.

However, it is equally possible that life on this planet began thousands of meters beneath the sea’s surface, in total darkness. Clues to this conjecture have been found in north-western Australia, in sulphur-rich rocks that retain micro-fossils of single-celled organisms over three and a quarter billion years old. These rocks possess mineral structures that reveal they originated close to hot springs on the sea floor.

In 1977, a mid-ocean ridge of hot springs was discovered encircling the globe. The wealth of chemicals and nutrients it supplies nourishes a complex ecosystem of over 500 species, from bacteria to tube worms and crabs.

The energy source that sustains this web of life is the oxidization of hydrogen sulphide in a process called chemosynthesis (as opposed to photosynthesis, whereby sunlight powers life on the Earth’s surface). Experiments at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution determined that when similar physical (high-pressure, turbulence, completely dark, etc.) and chemical conditions are constructed in the laboratory, large organic molecules containing over thirty carbon atoms form in less than a day. Thus, life on Earth may have first begun in the sunless depths of its oceans.

Alternatively, life may have begun as some form of methanogen. Methanogens are microbes that obtain energy by converting hydrogen and carbon dioxide into methane. Very few such organisms exist in any of Earth’s typical, oxygen-abundant, environments (because methanogens are consumed by the more-efficient carbon life forms that now occupy these niches), but a complete food-chain community of them has been found in Idaho living in 58°C water two hundred meters underground. Presumably these have survived from very early times. Methanogen communities may have been common on this planet before oxygen in gaseous form became abundant (see ../Development Of Life On Earth/) and they may also exist where conditions are similar, such as upon some of the sun’s other planets or moons, for instance.

While several situations and mechanisms might have given rise to life on this planet, it may in fact owe its origins to extraterrestrial events that first happened in water, frozen in space, long ago and far away. Although space temperatures average just 3° above absolute zero, recent experiments have found that amorphous ice (the kind that forms when water vapour freezes in a vacuum) flows when subjected to ultraviolet radiation (as it would be in space). In the laboratory, when carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methanol (gases all abundant in space) are dissolved in water before freezing to form amorphous ice, subsequent ultraviolet radiation produces hundreds of complex organic molecules. Moreover, if this frozen ice flows (or is melted or added to water), membranous vesicles (similar to those found in the 1969 Murchison meteorite ) are formed, together with even more complex compounds (some able to convert ultraviolet energy to visible light). Laboratory findings such as these are reinforced through data collected by the European Space Agency’s satellite Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). When scrutinizing selected objects, the ISO can detect the emission of infrared rays at particular wavelengths, revealing the presence of identifiable atoms, molecules and solids. These data show that complex, ring-structured, aromatic molecules form in the regions surrounding very old stars, over the relatively short period of a thousand years or so. Spectral analysis of interstellar dusts and gases have identified hundreds of different organic compounds, including amino acids of the type needed to build life’s proteins. Recently, sugar molecules (glycolaldehyde) have been spectroscopically detected in the dust clouds near the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. (What makes this finding particularly interesting is that such molecules can combine with other molecules to form ribose and glucose; ribose molecules are utilized in the construction of DNA and RNA.)

All these findings strongly suggest that life’s precursors, including cell-like sacs containing organic compounds, could have been formed many billions of years ago in space, and would therefore be part of all comets, asteroids and planets from their very beginnings.

 * Return to Life, Introduction
 * ../Development Of Life On Earth/


text:
Neapolitan/501 Neapolitan verbs/tené

tené

 * English: to have
 * Italian: tenere, possedere, trattenere, avere

To form the compound tenses add the auxiliary verb (avé) + past participle (tenuto)

1. Indicativo
 * a. presente
 * {| class="wikitable"

 * align="left"|io
 * align="left"|tengo
 * align="left"|tu
 * align="left"|tiene
 * align="left"|isso/essa
 * align="left"|tene
 * align="left"|nuje
 * align="left"|tenimmo
 * align="left"|vuje
 * align="left"|tenite
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|teneno
 * }
 * align="left"|tenite
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|teneno
 * }
 * }

 * b. o' passato assaje
 * {| class="wikitable"

 * align="left"|io
 * align="left"|teniette
 * align="left"|tu
 * align="left"|teniste
 * align="left"|isso/essa
 * align="left"|teniette
 * align="left"|nuje
 * align="left"|tenetteme
 * align="left"|vuje
 * align="left"|tenisteve
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|tenettere
 * }
 * align="left"|tenisteve
 * align="left"|isse/lloro
 * align="left"|tenettere
 * }
 * }

title: Neapolitan/501 Neapolitan verbs/tené


text:
Developing A Universal Religion/Life/Development Of Life On Earth

While we don’t definitively know where life first developed, we do know approximately when it first appeared on Earth—it showed up less than a quarter of a billion years after the Earth’s crust had formed. In other words, just about as soon as it could.

For reasons noted in the introduction to this chapter, early evidence of life is hard to come by. Nevertheless, indirect evidence suggests that it was present at least 3.7 billion years ago. This has been deduced from an analysis of rocks dating to that age, found on an island close to Greenland. These rocks contain a higher carbon-12 to carbon-13 isotopic ratio than chemical and physical processes alone would create. (Life processes prefer the lighter isotopes, and this concentrates carbon-12 where life exists.) More direct evidence, in the form of fossil micro-organisms, has been discovered in sedimentary rocks from Iceland that are between 3.7 and 3.8 billion years old. (Iceland is particularly suitable for finding early life forms because its rocks have not been greatly disturbed by geological processes during the intervening ages.)

Many of us were taught in school that there are three kingdoms of life on this planet. The simplest and most ancient are called the Archaea (otherwise known as archaebacteria, the first cells).

Archaean kingdom representatives were first discovered in volcanic vents on the floor of the Pacific ocean, three kilometres deep off the Galápagos Islands. Archaea and very primitive bacteria are autotrophic (that is, they build their complex living molecules by chemosynthesis, a chemical process mentioned in the previous section).

The second kingdom, the Prokarya, are a later development; they consist of life forms whose cells lack internal membranes (and thus have no nuclei).

Prokaryotic life was flourishing within the Earth’s shallow oceans as blue-green algae (a.k.a. cyanobacteria), over three and a half billion years ago. Once formed, the anaerobic cyanobacteria began dumping its photosynthetic by-product, oxygen, into the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere, and continued to do so without much competition for over two billion years. Eventually a new form of bacteria evolved that was able to use this oxygen through a process we call aerobic respiration; this opened the way for the more complex (and more energy-demanding), nucleated, eukaryotic cells to evolve. (Bacteria, of course, still exist in abundance everywhere conditions permit, and they still lack cell nuclei. )

The third kingdom, the Eukarya, first appeared about two billion years ago. The cells of eukaryotic life forms contain membrane-bound nuclei, and all plants and animals (including humans) belong to this kingdom.

While one billion years ago the continents were still barren (with the possible exception of primitive algae), the seas teemed with unicellular life. Many of these life forms reproduced asexually through division, although some used sexual means. About 700 m.y.a. (million years ago), multicellular sea plants appeared. They rapidly developed in form and prevalence as they made the most of their added capabilities. Multicellular sea plants stayed at the forefront of life’s evolution until the beginning of the Cambrian era, about 540 m.y.a., when multiple forms of marine animals developed from simpler varieties of roundworms. This transition occurred because possession of body cavities and an alimentary canal allowed worm-like creatures to grow more than a few cells thick (as nutrients and waste materials could now be readily passed between internal cells and the external environment). Larger bodies meant that supporting structures would be valuable adaptations, and any that evolved would be retained. The first vertebrates developed soon thereafter (about 500 m.y.a.).

By 400 m.y.a., plants, fungi and primitive arthropods (invertebrates, similar to crabs or lobsters, having an external skeleton and jointed appendages) had colonized the ocean shores and moved inland. (The ongoing evolution of early arthropods eventually produced spiders, centipedes and insects.) Around this time, fish utilized their swim bladders and fins to spend temporary periods on land. These organs gradually evolved into lungs and legs, and the animal class known as amphibians arose. The fluid-filled amniotic sacs we call eggs allowed amphibians to reproduce and give birth on dry land, and some later evolved into reptiles, dinosaurs, lizards, snakes and turtles.

The earliest mammals appeared some 200 m.y.a., evolving from a group of reptiles called therapsids. These mammals were small (about five centimetres long) and possibly lived in trees during the dinosaur age. They remained rodent-like creatures until the dinosaurs became extinct 65 m.y.a. One branch of these early mammals evolved (some 30 m.y.a.) to become Proconsul, our hominoid ape ancestor, and their descendants became the gibbons, orang-utans, gorillas and chimpanzees we know today. About six million years ago, the ape and hominid lineages separated; today our closest living relatives are Central African chimpanzees (demonstrated and verified by comparative DNA sequencing ).

The genus Homo appeared about two and a half m.y.a. (although stone tools have been found that date to earlier periods). Artifacts left by “technologically advanced” clans of early humans (who used stone tools to chip bones and antlers into refined shapes) have been found in Israel’s Dead Sea Rift Valley and dated definitively to 780,000 years ago.

Neandertals (who first appeared in Europe about 200,000 y.a. and whose ancestors were hominids who moved from Africa to Europe some 500,000 y.a.) holed up in valleys to survive the ice ages and so avoided the many challenges that constant moves would have brought. Perhaps as a result, their tools changed little during most of their existence, and this suggests that their intelligence also did not greatly change. However, fossilized bone structures show that Neandertals did have the means to utter words, and they probably developed and used simple languages.

The tools and ornaments of Homo sapiens, on the other hand, changed greatly over very short periods of time. Our species first appeared in Africa over 100,000 y.a. and moved into Europe (as Cro-Magnon) around 40,000 y.a., and they seemed to have confronted and surmounted the various challenges successive ice ages introduced.

How do we know these things? Specimens of life and associated artifacts have been trapped in muddy sediments, chalk, glacial ice, peat bogs, dry sandy deserts, tree resin etc., for millions of years. These entombments often preserve complete specimens in date-stamped strata for scientists to examine. Painstaking observations over many decades combined with more recent sophisticated analytical techniques (such as DNA analysis and various imaging techniques) consistently show that life’s development demonstrates an overall progressive trend from simple to complex.

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 * ../Evolution/


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Developing A Universal Religion/Life/Evolution

Millennia ago, humans realized that greatly different animals (deer, birds and fish, for example) possess body organs and systems very similar to their own, but could not explain why. Over the centuries various explanations were proposed, some theological, some scientific; two centuries ago most people accepted the theological interpretation—that life in its different forms was Created. Papers read to the Linnean Society in 1858 written by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace (who had independently reached similar conclusions) did little to change this situation—attendees simply did not understand the importance of what they were hearing. However, when Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, was published a year later, evolution became a topic of discussion for every learned person and things changed forever.

It is easy to understand what immediately happened. Darwin and his ideas were ridiculed by almost everyone; scientists said he could not prove what he was saying, and the religious said that mankind was created—as proven by texts in the Bible. Humans simply could not be “descended from an ape.”

Darwin’s work, and its attendant publicity, resulted in widespread use of the words “evolution” and “natural selection.” These terms are sometimes treated as though they hold the same significance—they do not. One is a fact, the other is a theory, and we should take a moment to discuss the differences between the two.

There is plenty of evidence to show that evolution occurred—is still occurring—and that all life on this planet is interrelated, with a common ancestry. Palaeontologists study fossils of once-living organisms, and their work demonstrates that the bones and structures of ancient life forms gradually changed over time. Comparative studies of the physical and systemic structures of living plants and animals uncover the same kind of gradual change. Genetic mapping adds to the information obtained, and shows beyond any possible doubt that links between living species, and between living and extinct species, exist. Weiner, after discussing work done by Seymour Benzer and his wife in the 1980s, noted that flies, worms, seeds, yeasts and bacteria possess thousands of very similar genes or gene sequences. This could only have occurred if they all had a common ancestor. (In fact, a pre-Cambrian common ancestor must have existed, well over 540 m.y.a., for such widely separated species to possess so many similar genes.) Moreover, as Weiner pointed out, the genomes of mice and men (and women, if it needs to be stated) are about the same size and contain corresponding genes. (de Duve actually states that the evidence showing all Earthly organisms to be descendants of one common ancestor is “overwhelming.”)

That evolution occurs is something animal and plant breeders have known and profited from for centuries, and it is a fact that few educated people today dispute.

However, we can never be certain that we know all of the factors that cause evolution to occur, so any explanation of why evolution occurs may someday be modified or even overturned. While we have what we think is a very good idea, there could be additional or different reasons why evolution happens, so scientists continue to call this very good idea a theory. Natural selection is Darwin’s very good idea, and it has withstood all manner of challenges to its ability to explain and to predict. But it can be thrown into doubt, and even discredited, any time a fact of evolution is found that it cannot explain. (All scientific explanations are like this; any or all of them may one day be shown to be inadequate or inaccurate, and we remind ourselves of this limitation by calling many of them theories. All will remain theories forever.We continue to call Einstein’s masterpiece “The General Theory of Relativity,” but few state that it is just a “theory,” or that atomic bombs cannot exist.

“Laws,” too, including the Conservation Laws of physics, can be overthrown if negating proof is discovered.

(Never knowing if any “fact” or theory is entirely correct is a consequence of living within a [presumably] closed system. See the ../../Gödel’s Theorem, General Systems Theory, and The Conservation Laws for elaboration.)

Thus, that evolution occurs is a fact; however, the explanation why evolution occurs will always be called a theory. This, presumably, is why controversy continues. A few people, wilfully or mistakenly, capitalize upon the word “theory” to imply that the concept is untrue, and that evolution does not occur. What they might better state is that the natural selection explanation of why evolution occurs is a theory, good only until some better explanation is found. A certain amount of knowledge is needed to understand and appreciate what the theory of natural selection tells us about evolution. However, even those without such schooling still require some kind of explanation to account for life’s beginning and the presence of humankind. Creationism was developed to offer an explanation of sorts. It is an ancient idea that attempts to explain the unknown in a simple way. (All religions, if they are to be taken seriously, must explain how and why things are as we find them to be.) Unfortunately, Creationism ignores or attempts to refute too many evolutionary facts to be credible to anyone with an educated and impartial mind. Moreover, a belief in Creationism (like all beliefs) installs the opinion that one knows just as much as (and, often, even more than) is known by those who can call upon mountains of solid evidence that supports a different view.

That a few hold creationist views wouldn’t particularly matter, if it were not for the fact that their belief forces them to influence what is taught to children. Currently, schools in the American states of Alabama, Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington must teach that evolution is deemed to be no more significant than the belief that Creationists hold to be true (in spite of the mountains of credible evidence that support the former, and none that supports the latter). Still other schools deliberately leave evolution entirely off the curriculum to avoid controversy; they resort to teaching facts alone, and say nothing about the simplifying and edifying explanation that makes the existence of all we see in nature so logical and understandable.

In our world so dependent upon scientific knowledge, Creationism is a capricious belief to support, and it is very likely to limit the future success of its believers. This may not matter to adults, but it hampers children, who have many years to live in a techno-medical society. Of course, in the long run, the fallacy is self-correcting—after all, we live in a universe where survival of the fittest gives preference to those whose actions fit the facts. Unfortunately, as noted in footnote 7, it can only confer preference to those who act rationally when the immediately controlling environment is a rational one. This appears not to be the situation in a number of U.S. school boards.

It may be necessary to articulate that science neither opposes nor supports religion—it simply tries to uncover and understand the facts as they are found to be. To refute the millions upon millions of pieces of evidence that reveal that life evolved (and that humans are just one consequence of this evolution) is foolhardy. Rational individuals might better ask themselves which is most likely to be the truth—that which was originally written by a few wishing to promote a particular belief, or that for which evidence can be found in tangible form, everywhere, by anyone who cares to look.

Read Robert T. Pennock, Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism (Boston: MIT Press, 1999) for a scholarly refutation of creationist ideas.

Returning to the theme of this section, it is estimated that some two billion species have evolved on Earth during the past six hundred million years (the period for which we have some of the best fossil records, and during which all of our land life developed). Today, about 99.9% of these are extinct.

The two million species that exist today exhibit a multiplicity of forms. Variations range from the large, most-obviously complex, multi-system animals, down to the minute, single-celled, relatively simple bacteria. As might be expected, it is the tiniest of these which demonstrate the greatest diversity and resilience. The habitats of bacteria range from the plus 91°C boiling hot springs of Yellowstone Park, to the minus 50°C super-cooled brines found in the Antarctic. Bacteria also flourish under tremendous pressures on the ocean floor, spread prolifically throughout the soil we walk upon, waft through the air we breathe, and luxuriate in every kitchen.

When the papers written by Darwin and Wallace were first read, no one had seen evolution occurring. Today, experiments demonstrating its thesis can be conducted using fruit flies in high school science laboratories. Evolution was thought to be too slow to be witnessed in nature, but the real challenge to demonstrating its ubiquitous occurrence comes from the need to detect and measure small changes over a number of generations while also recording every possible factor that might relate to (or be causing) such changes.

Some of the earliest decisive documentation of evolution occurring in the wild was obtained by Peter and Rosemary Grant through studies of “Darwin’s” finches on the relatively isolated Galápagos island, Daphne Major. For more than two decades, the Grants, with the help of many colleagues, captured, numbered, precisely measured, banded, catalogued and released, almost every finch that lived on the island (sometimes only a few hundred, sometimes several thousand in a year). This period included years of drought, as well as wet and more normal years. In this manner, they recorded the features of close to 100,000 finches, together with many details about their varying habitats.

These records were run through computer programs that sought correlations between the number and variety of finch, and changes in their environment such as rainfall, seed plant variety and abundance, and so on. Drought years drastically reduced the number of softer seeds, leaving the number of hard-shelled cactus seeds about the same. Finch species with large, strong beaks that were able to crack hard-shelled seeds, survived in stable numbers during those years, as might be expected. However, measurements of surviving members of the other finch species showed that only those whose beak was larger than average for their species were surviving and reproducing. The net result was that the beak size of each finch species drifted toward a larger and stronger shape during drought years. This drift continued in successive generations for as long as the drought continued. Wet years produced the opposite effect, and resulted in a drift within each species toward a finer beak structure (because the cactus plants began to die, and thinner beaks could better retrieve the smaller seeds of other plants that fell into the many tiny cracks in the island’s volcanic rocks).

Others have conducted parallel work. John Endler, for instance, working with guppies in various South American countries, observed natural generational variations in colour which were brought about by changes in the environment. Dark water favoured brilliance (better to attract females); light water favoured camouflage (better for hiding from predators).

Any change in an environment may affect species living within that environment. An accumulation of adaptations within one species eventually produces what becomes described as a new species. Collections of plant, animal and insect fossils in museums and universities around the world show that time, environmental change, and geographical separation are all that are needed for species to evolve from old into new.

Changes over time cause descendants to either diverge (i.e. increase in difference, one from another), or converge (i.e., increase in similarity). The factors that promote species divergence are predominately food (which favours the development of tools—for instance, the beak—that better exploit the particular kind of environment which supplies that food) and sex (which favours the development of partner-attracting displays or like-attracting-like matings). The forces that promote species convergence include the presence of enemies (which favours the development of camouflage and herd behaviours, the latter because there is safety in numbers) and the physical features of the environment being exploited. Hybridization, whereby closely related species merge genes, can produce fairly rapid convergence or divergence. The prevailing environment determines which outcome predominantly survives.

Evolution, we now realize, is often not a slow and gradual process. It can occur in small or large bursts, and these may be followed by long ages of slow consolidation. A common sequence is as follows: an environmental calamity occurs, followed by a rapid collapse in food supplies. The calamity can be localized and relatively insignificant (a fallen rock, for instance) or something very pervasive (the eruption of an immense volcano, the impact of a large comet, or the rapid development of an ice age, for example). Each environmental change causes the death of some or perhaps almost all of the existing, previously well-adapted species. The decline in numbers of some species (or the environmental change itself) opens niches that were previously occupied, blocked, or non-existent, and this provides opportunities for suitably different members of surviving species to thrive.

The mutations that make life’s evolution and continuance possible need not be large, as the work with Darwin’s finches demonstrates. However, even drastically mutated offspring may survive and flourish under some kinds of environmental change. Evolutionary change following extinctions is rapid, because many of the previously well-adapted (and presumably competing species) completely die out. This may open niches accommodating to some of the more extreme variants (that might not otherwise have survived); without competition, they may now proliferate. Evolutionary change slows down again just as soon as successfully adapted species fill all available energy niches.

Massive extinctions have not been uncommon in our planet’s history. Two of the more infamous were probably caused by asteroids or comets hitting the Earth. The first of these occurred around 208 m.y.a., creating the environment that early dinosaurs exploited to become the Earth’s dominant animals (this impact produced the changes that mark the junction between the Triassic and Jurassic periods). The second collision happened around 65 m.y.a., and ended the dinosaurs’ supremacy. Other extinctions occurred around 438 m.y.a., 367 m.y.a., and 245 m.y.a. Each of these cataclysms resulted in the demise of more than fifty percent of the prevailing marine species, and an equal or greater percentage of the existing land species. Sediments formed around 245 m.y.a. have recently been found to hold carbon “buckyballs” that contain trapped helium and argon gases which are present in a ratio similar to that found in carbon-based meteorites. This adds support to the theory that the effects of a sizable comet or asteroid impact caused the massive extinction that wiped out over 90% of all extant species (and marks the Permian-Triassic Boundary). This extinction eliminated much competition and provided the niches that some lizards exploited during the following twenty million years as they slowly evolved into the earliest forms of dinosaurs.

Other environmental calamities may have occurred several times between 750 and 570 m.y.a. An analysis of carbon-12 to carbon-13 ratios in sedimentary layers formed in ancient oceans shows that life came to a standstill four times during that period (see the August 28, 1998 edition of Science). It is postulated that the Earth was entirely covered with ice during these times, resembling a planetary snowball. What subsequently happened may have been as follows. Life survived (as multicellular algae and seaweeds) in the small pockets that formed where volcanoes and hot springs maintained some warmth. Meanwhile, the same volcanoes continuously pumped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and a greenhouse environment slowly developed. After some tens of millions of years (during which time life in the warm pockets diversified as it variously adapted to each pocket’s particular environment), the greenhouse gases triggered periods of planetary warming. About 565 m.y.a. most of the ice covering the Earth melted, and the pockets opened up. The life forms released from different zones would then have been able to cross-fertilize, and in the warm, nutritionally rich environment, with minimal competition, evolution would have run rampant. This could have spawned the broad diversity of ancestral multicellular plants and animals that we find in fossil form from this period, and begun the Cambrian Age.

Records of growth from tree rings as well as ice core samples show that large calamities, due to one cause or another, have also occurred relatively recently. The most prominent events happened around 3200, 2300, 1628, and 1159 BCE; the most recent took place in 535 CE.

Catastrophes rapidly and radically transform the planet’s various environments, and life forms that do not adapt (i.e., evolve) do not survive. (And, as a corollary, it must be emphasized that if life does not continue to evolve it will not continue to survive, for it is certain that changes will occur to life’s environment in the future just as often as they have in the past. Moreover, it is worth noting that the environment currently changing the most rapidly is not the Earth’s biosphere, it is our human mental environment—a change brought about by the mix of facts, ideas, opinions, fantasies, beliefs, etc., that worms its way into our thoughts every day. To survive, we must discover how to adapt to the changes occurring there.)

Fossil records show gross evolutionary changes in Homo’s body structures that took thousands of years to develop. Detecting subtle changes necessitates making fine measurements, and we currently lack the detailed records covering several generations that would unequivocally demonstrate human evolution in action. Doubtless, as computer record-keeping increases in scope and depth (particularly if DNA profiles are to be stored), we will soon have plenty of evidence to show that, like all else that lives, humans evolve, and evolve continuously.

Humans have always acted to minimize the effects of events that may influence their evolution. We store food and survive most food shortages; if we did not do this, the average body mass and size of H. sapiens would drift downwards. We capitalize on niches and specialize in occupations; if we did not do this, our numbers would decrease because there would be too many competing within each energy niche (read money, thus food, for energy) and fewer would survive. We stress universal literacy and education; if we did not do this, the total number of energy niches would decline over time. Together, forces such as these select for particular skills: musical, mathematical, artistic, and so on. In effect, ever since we have had the ability, we have acted in a manner that influences the way we evolve. Genetic engineering is about to vastly extend this ability.

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 * ../The Probability That Life Exists Elsewhere/


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Developing A Universal Religion/Life/The Probability That Life Exists Elsewhere

It is not difficult to estimate the probability that life has developed on other planets in the universe. All we need do is calculate the total number of stars, the number of these that may support habitable planets, and the likelihood that any of these planets would support life. This type of formulation was first proposed in 1961 by Frank Drake, currently Chairman Emeritus of the SETI Institute. (SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, is a project that has been running for over 25 years at University of California-Berkeley using radio telescopes.) Drake wished to guesstimate the possibility of being able to contact extra-terrestrial life, and made a calculation somewhat like the following:

 * Number of technical civilizations in the Milky Way =
 * Number of stars in the Milky Way (say 2x1011) x
 * Fraction of stars with planetary systems (say ½) x
 * Number of planets per star (say 1) x
 * Number of planets favourable to life (say 1/10) x
 * Fraction eventually developing life (say 1/10) x
 * Fraction with intelligent life (say 1/100) x
 * Fraction at our technical stage of development (say 1/10,000).

See Drake equation.

Multiplying these together we find that the number of planets with life at an “electronically-developed” stage in our galaxy could be around a thousand. Of course, the number likely to be at our stage of development, when communications over distances are carried out by AM, FM, or digitally encoded electro-magnetic waves, the kind of signals SETI’s instruments have been looking for, is quite critical. More advanced beings may well be using a different form of communication—piped-optical for example, or some other method that our current instruments would not detect. SETI has also been conducting optical searches (without success) and has just begun looking for laser beacons (which, if narrowly focused, would only be detected if we happened to pass through their beam).

In our calculation, since we are only estimating the possibility that life exists elsewhere, we are not bothered about its intelligence or stage of development so can ignore the reduction these fractions would contribute. Moreover, we are discussing life’s presence in the entire universe, not just our own galaxy.

First, the number of stars in our universe. It is estimated that our Milky Way galaxy contains between two and three hundred billion stars (2-3 x 1011), and that there are about one hundred billion galaxies (1011) in the visible universe. If the average number of stars in other galaxies is similar to ours, then there are 2-3 x 1022 stars all told. Using the smaller number we have 2 x 1022 stars to start with.

Second, there are many inhospitable zones within all galaxies (the planets of stars too close to the centre of a galaxy or to radiating black holes, for instance, are being sterilized by microwaves ) and stars in these regions are unlikely to support life-bearing planets, at least, not life as we think of it. Let’s guess that only one tenth of each galaxy’s stars are clear of these areas, giving us 2 x 1021 stars in hospitable zones of the universe.

Third, using observations noted in The Life Of A Typical Star, we can guesstimate that some fifty percent of all stars possess planetary systems, so about 1 x 1021 (or 1021) stars are predicted to have orbiting planets.

Fourth, many exoplanets likely do not possess the conditions we consider necessary to support life (water, appropriate temperature ranges, appropriate elements and minerals, energy sources such as sunlight or planetary heat, etc.). A reasonable guess might be that of those possessing planetary systems, only one star in ten will hold a planet that is habitable. This gives us 1020 stars or 1020 habitable planets.

Fifth, we do not know if life will always arise on habitable planets. For a discussion on this topic see “Livable Planets: Calculations raise the odds for finding life in the cosmos,” by Corey S. Powell in Scientific American, February 1993, 18-20.

The Earth may already possess a few samples of life from elsewhere in the cosmos, lying undiscovered on our ocean floors or hidden in rocks or crannies on our continents. Entities resembling a string of cells (and possibly being primitive life forms) have been discovered on a meteorite originating from Europa (one of Jupiter’s moons). However the sample is not large enough to conclude whether any of the entities were once living.

Analyses of magnetic-field intensities along with various other measurements taken by satellites, indicate that Ganymede, Europa and Callisto (all moons of Jupiter) possess water. Some form of life may exist or have existed within this water, but this possibility remains to be explored. Probes, specifically equipped to test for water, may be sent to Europa within the next decade. Future Mars landers will be exploring areas where frozen reservoirs of water have been discovered, specifically looking for the presence of life. However, within our solar system, only our planet provides easy living; conditions on the other planets and moons are such that any life that might be found is bound to be primitive.

Astronomers occasionally search for distant signs of life using satellites and telescopes principally designed for other purposes. This will change in 2007, provided NASA’s scheduled Kepler Mission satellite launches successfully. This mission will carry telescopes designed to locate and check the atmospheres of exoplanets for the presence of ozone. Ozone is a gas formed from free oxygen, and free oxygen can only be produced in lasting quantities by life. This is because methane, produced by bacterial decomposition of organic matter, constantly removes free oxygen by combining with it to form other compounds. If both methane and oxygen are found in exoplanet atmospheres, then life is almost certain to be producing a continuous supply of the oxygen.) If, as is turning out to be likely, the molecules from which life originates can form in space-ice, then probably all of the universe’s planets will have been inoculated by now. How much of this material then goes on to create life can only be a guess. Presumably, if the right conditions exist, eventually all will; but, to err on the conservative side, let us say that only one in a hundred habitable planets becomes a host to life. Thus about 1018 (1,000,000,000,000,000,000 or one quintillion) life-bearing planets possibly exist in the visible universe. Of these, about 107, or ten million, could be in our own galaxy.

As we learn more about the nature of life and our universe, we will undoubtedly revise our estimates of the number of planets that could be home to living entities. The number may decrease or increase, even significantly, but it is very unlikely that the number will turn out to be one. Statistically, therefore, it is highly improbable that our planet is the only one to bear life; the universe contains an incredibly large number of stars, and the conditions and ingredients required to start and support life probably exist in many, many millions of places. Furthermore, these places may include intergalactic space, within gases where life’s precursors may first have formed, then evolved, to create living entities that waft through the heavens in forms vastly different from ones we might recognize.

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 * ../Intelligent Life/