The Randomness

I thought I'd post today about how wildly amazing it is that we are even here. And I don't mean just that I'm sitting here in Massachusetts, USA typing this - I mean that we even exist at all. Countless events had to occur in just the order that they did, at the time they did, and in the way that they did for us to be at this point in human history.

Here's a quote from the Introduction of Bill Bryson's incredible book, A Short History of Nearly Everything:

"To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence."

A quick aside, that book is one of the best I've ever read, and I would recommend it to anyone. He goes on to say in the introduction that nobody really knows why the atoms do stick together to make us. He says (this will really make you think), "if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mount of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you."

We can imagine these occurrences any way we want, and since I love "what if" scenarios, let's try a few. If the Pilgrims had never arrived in the New World and had that Thanksgiving dinner with the Indians, the United States wouldn't be as it is now. Then again, someone else probably would have come soon after, and possibly done it anyway. It seems as though, as Carl Sagan said, an event such as that was most likely inevitable.

What if we go really far back? If the animal that had originally given rise to us humans was eaten by that Tyrannosaurus instead of running away, the human race could have been quite a bit different. We might not exist at all, or maybe a different creature would have risen to the top, learned math and physics and biology, and put a person on Mars by now.

Let's get real crazy and ask what it would be like if the physical force of gravity was different. If I remember correctly, Bill Bryson mentions it in the book above. If gravity was just slightly less powerful than it is now, the planets and stars possibly would not be able to form. The entire universe would be essentially single particles flying through space.

That we exist in the form we do right now in the present is because literally all the random events and physical forces in the universe, from the first cells forming in an ancient ocean, to light traveling at the speed it does, to humans figuring out how to use fire, happened. It's quite a thought, and it really makes you appreciate the universe just a little bit more.