Didn’t I tickle your curiosity enough in my previous article to arouse you into loving this oldest of sciences enough to learn more and more about it nearly as soon as possible?

Dark matter for instance, baffles me as much as it confounds you. True that it is there; true also that it hides many stars and galaxies behind its frightening, black veil. But it is also ominous that some portions of it could be covering and hiding whole groups of galaxies or entire star systems and is therefore way out of our capacity to understand it! Much less watch what worlds lie hidden behind it….

Why and how did the black matter escape the ominous clutches of gravity? Isn’t gravity universal? Then why the total mystery? The questions will drive me crazy. Even then the answer will not be forthcoming. Since the ‘disease’ is contagious, and not likely to be cured anytime soon, let us get back to the remaining business.

Drake’s equation: A pseudo mathematical workout estimating the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI). Many people have worked on it. But the US astronomer Francis Drake primarily gets the credit.

In 1960 he conducted the first search for artificial radio signal from another civilisation. The world-wide search pioneered by him still continues.

According to him there is a good possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence to be found, for the Earth is not unique, that there is every likelihood for evolution of intelligent life to emerge elsewhere. On the following grounds, of course:

1.  The rate at which new stars are formed in our galaxy each year.

2.  The fraction of those stars that may have Earth-like planet/s.

3.  Probability of some kind of life on a planet.

4.  The chances of intelligent life evolving on a planet.

5. The probability of intelligent life trying to communicate with similar worlds. 

As you see, much of it is not arithmetic but ‘intelligently’ speculative and leads us nowhere. If you are optimistic, you give us a large number of stars harbouring life; if sceptical, you give us a small number. Going by any way, the result we get is high and somewhat misleading and not up to the mark.

I personally rule it out on a well-thought out basis. In any case, new stars are not commonplace to be ‘many’ of them forming in one year’s meagre time period. You know that a star takes many million of years to form. So I regard it as frivolous to believe so. You cannot build a whole philosophy of science on presumptions, howsoever imaginary.

Earth is in a safe region of the galaxy which is not hot and stormy or turbulent as a whole. It is at a safe distance from a medium-sized burning star enough for intelligent life to evolve, as eventually it did. The same is true for about 80 per cent of the stars.

But what of the remaining 20 per cent or so? They are situated in the region which is near the hub (centre, or nucleus of the Galaxy). Thus about 1/5th of the Galaxy is far too hot and inhospitable for life of any persuasion to evolve. Imagine millions of degrees temperature and million more lbs. of pressure. You keep your fingers crossed!

Published in Dawn, Young World, January 23rd, 2015