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W3dd1e@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

I don’t recall what I was reading, but I once read about a lot of things lined up perfectly for evolution on Earth.

In Sol’s habitable zone
Has a moon
Rotates on tilted axis
Stable rotation and orbit
Has magnetic field
Has Ozone Layer
Big planet (Jupiter) close enough to catch random asteroids, but not close enough to harm Earth

It’s bonkers that it all worked out that way so that I could be here, right now, reading your post and responding. It really boggles the mind and I don’t want to waste my time.

Welp, guess I’m gonna go look up random curse words in the dictionary. ಠᴗಠ

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n0respect@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ -Douglas Adams

Lines up perfectly … for life as we know it. See also: The Anthropic Principle

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Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
But in the vastness of space, it was practically guaranteed to happen somewhere. There are a set of criteria that allow for the evolution of life (as we know it) and it was going to happen somewhere, the fact that it happened here is no more awesome than it happening 3 galaxies over.

I know the feeling you are describing and the words to describe what i am trying to say are hard for me to grasp.

Its like in a film where the hero survives seemingly impossible odds and people watching say “no way, thats impossible” and can’t enjoy the film because its too unbelievable. I say no! This is a story about the one almost impossible time all these things happened. Thats the point. Yes its hard to believe, but thats what makes it awesome.

So the earth being here and humanity and all other animals evolving here is just the time in the impossibly vast universe that the “stars aligned” and the fact that we are experiencing it is just expected.

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- exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  But in the vastness of space, it was practically guaranteed to happen somewhere.
  
  Do we know this for sure?
  
  When we thoroughly shuffle a deck of 52 cards, we’re almost certainly creating a new deck order that has never been seen before and will likely never be seen again in a random shuffle.
  
  The number 52! is 8 x 10^67, so large that we can make the equivalent of a billion (1 x 10^9 ) shuffles per second per person on earth (8 x 10^9 ), so that in any given millennium (3.15 x 10^10 seconds) we’ve covered a percentage so small it’s got 37 leading zeros after the decimal point for the percentage, or 39 leading zeroes for the ratio itself.
  
  My impression is that factorial expansion for probabilities moves up much faster than the vastness of space itself, but I don’t know how to calculate the probabilities of each of these priors.
  
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Sheldan@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
How does having a moon and the tilted axis contribute to evolution?

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- BurnedDonutHole@ani.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  IIRC; Tilted axis gives us the seasons by doing so causing weather and water streams. Also lightning. Having a moon causing the tides is what’s believed to be the reason for the chemicals in the dirt and rocks mixing well to prepare the amino acids or something similar.
  
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  - Sheldan@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Thank you for the explanation.
    
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  - pressanykeynow@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    Having a moon causing the tides
    
    Our moon is not the only reason for the tides existing, our Sun kinda also have gravity, so it causes tides too.
    
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- W3dd1e@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  There are a few reasons but I kind of think it boils down to biodiversity. Seasonal changes, tides, light exposure, and varying temperatures would affect the balance of diverse life.
  
  For example, Earth didn’t always have oxygen. 2.4 billion years ago there was a bunch of microbial photosynthesis happening. Seasons and the tides affect ocean currents which moved nutrients around, allowing the bacteria to thrive and grow.
  
  Ozone’s formula is O~3~, so the Ozone layer wouldn’t have formed either.
  
  There are also other issues like how the seasons affect biological migration or how the moon slows the Earth’s rotation to about 24 hours/day.
  
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- Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Seasons add variability, which helps select life that is adaptable and less likely to be wiped out.
  
  Moon keeps the ocean moving, circulating the oxygen and nutrients.
  
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  - Sheldan@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Thank you for the explanation.
    
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Moidialectica@hexbear.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
‘lined up perfectly’ is a stretch, considering it’s safe to assume these ‘perfect’ conditions have appeared more than quadrillions of times within the universe

…and of course we’re in the darkest parts of that universe, so we will never be able to experience other similar worlds. Damn.

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- W3dd1e@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Oh for sure. The universe is too big for it to not have happened elsewhere. I’m not saying it’s unique, just rare.
  
  For me, it was the fact that the Earth is tilted at just the right angle that sort of blew my mind. Too much one way or another, we wouldn’t have seasons or day/night cycles.
  
  From under, other planets have been identified with the potential for life, but don’t have the tilt or the moon.
  
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kamen@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The sole fact that we’re here means that we don’t even have to think about those, but yeah.

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