THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
70 Falmouth Street  Portland, Maine 04103
(207) 780-4249   www.usm.maine.edu/southworth-planetarium
43.67° N 70.27° W
Founded January 1970
2022-2023: CI
Sunrise: 4:59 a.m.
Sunset: 8:23 p.m.
Civil twilight begins: 4:23 a.m.
Civil twilight ends: 8:59 p.m.
Sun's host constellation: Taurus the Bull
Lunar phase: Waning crescent (31% illuminated)
Moon rise: 1:51 a.m.
Moon set: 2:41 p.m.
Julian date: 2460108.29
             "Jeaniuses at werk"


THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Monday, June 12, 2023
The Early Organics

It's Monday.
Breathe.
Notice that.  The time of week notwithstanding, you're alive.     Not only
you, but those in your vicinity and the billions roaming around well
outside of it, as well.   Also, the  trees standing like indefatigable
sentries beyond your window, the billowing grasses expanding radially away
from them, the pestiferous insect swarms, bewildered snowbirds, gluttonous
skin-craving dust mites, not to mention the various sundry fish darting
frantically and behemoth whales lumbering lethargically within the
tenebrous realms of the wine-dark sea.     Let's not forget the untold
trillions of Proteobacteria, Verrocumicrobia, Firmicutes, and the rest of
the staggering array of invasive microbes dining parasitically within your
gasto-intestinal tract.    Life proliferates within our world now just as
it has done for billions of years.  Of course, there's much more diversity
now than existed in the early days.  All the same, life took hold along the
cracked, steaming membrane of our smouldering world nearly 3.8 billion
years ago and after an uneasy period of cleaving tenaciously to our
trembling Earth spread like malicious gossip all around it.
Makes one wonder.
Along how many other worlds within the Universe does life exist; be it
inthe form of prokaryotic cells clustered in warm ponds or mega-cities
populated by highly advanced , space-faring bi- or tripeds?       Also, how
long has life existed within the Universe?    At what point did the cosmos
generate the elements necessary to construct the first life forms?
 Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have possibly discovered
the answer.   In a paper published in Nature and entitled 'Spatial
Variations in aromatic hydrocarbon emission in a dust-rich galaxy,'
astronomer Justin Spiker and his team have announced the detection of
organic molecules in the galaxy SPT0418-47, located 12 billion light years
away.       Since these molecules, known as  polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons (PAHs), were found in a galaxy 12 billion light years away,
they existed 12 billion years ago, slightly more than one billion years
after the Big Bang.

[image: PIA03538_modest.jpg]
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHS) were recently detected in a galaxy
12 billion light years away.    The presence of such molecules in the early
Universe might indicate that life developed relatively soon after the birth
of the Universe.  (Image:  NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

PAHS serve as the basic building blocks for the simplest life forms.
According to Spiker, PAHS are quite common in space and, as we all now
know, were present in the early Universe.   The detection of life's
essential components might indicate that life could have started relatively
soon after the Universe formed 13.82 billion years ago.

It has been said that the Universe's true purpose is not merely the
construction of life, but the generation of intelligence, artificial or
otherwise.    Perhaps.  In any event, we at least know that the Universe
might have been capable of forming life almost as soon as conditions were
conducive to its development.



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