According to Columbia University chemist Ronald Breslow somewhere in the universe lies a civilization of extraterrestrial dinosaurs. Based on his journal article concerning the origins of organic molecules on Earth, he maybe right.
To his credit Professor Breslow isn't a nutcase. He holds Columbia's highest academic rank, served as president of the American Chemical Society, is a recipient of the National Medal of Science and many other top honors, and is generally regarded as an all-around Eminent Scientisst. Plus we give Stephen Hawking a pass for saying some off the wall, impossible sh!t. So give the man a chance, racist.
In the last paragraph of his article for the Journal for the American Chemical Society titled "EVIDENCE FOR THE LIKELY ORIGIN OF HOMOCHIRALITY IN AMINO ACIDS,SUGARS, AND NUCLEOSIDES ON PREBIOTIC EARTH"(and sh!t). The paragraph reads as such:
An implication from this work is that elsewhere in the universe there could be life forms based on D amino acids and L sugars, depending on the chirality of circular polarized light in that sector of the universe or whatever other process operated to favor the L α‐methyl amino acids in the meteorites that have landed on Earth. Such life forms could well be advanced versions of dinosaurs, if mammals did not have the good fortune to have the dinosaurs wiped out by an asteroidal collision, as on Earth. We would be better off not meeting them.
Basically that's nerdspeak for: Intelligent, man-eating reptiles exist on another planet and they've gotta score to settle with mammals for takin' they spot...bitches.
This subject has turned lesser scientists to madness, strippers & ultimately, gateway drugs. To explain further, pretty much all of the proteins, sugars, and genetic material on Earth exists in one of two possible orientations, or chiralities, as they are called. With a few small exceptions, all of the amino acids – the building blocks of proteins – are "left handed." Almost all sugars are "right handed."
For the record, no one knows why the f@ck that is. Its also worth mentioning, organic molecules found in meteorites appear to contain a mix of right- and left-handed chiralities. Breslow is a supporter of the hypothesis that life on earth was "seeded" or "pollinated" by one or more meteorites containing basic organic molecules, and he speculates that these molecules just happened to be left handed. He also notes, it could very well be that carbon-based life on other planets, if it exists, could be made of right-handed proteins.
It's possible for polarized ultraviolet light to breakdown molecules of one orientation while leaving molecules of their mirror image intact. One theory, Breslow researched, proposes that starlight striking magnetically polarized space dust could have broken down the right-handed organic molecules on our primordial space rock, leaving the left-handed ones unharmed.
I know what you're asking though, why dinosaurs? It's unlikely, to say the least. When it comes to evolution, nothing is inevitable. As the great and prolific Nasty Nas once said, "life is like a dice game." If we were somehow able to wind the clock back (or fly around the Earth at the speed of light against it's rotation to save a dying Lois lane) some 3.5 billion years or so (oh, never mind) all the way back to the last common ancestor of all life on Earth, there's nothing that we know of in nature that points to or guarantees the emergence of animals, much less dinosaurs. Or even motherf@cking humans, for that matter.
Still, the universe is a big place and pretty much doesn't give a f@ck about what you think is and isn't possible. Life is a dice game indeed, Nasir. So if you're expecting a spaceship full of talking, man-flesh eating Velociraptors to land in the middle of your favorite metropolis and reek havoc in the near future. Don't, even if that happened its highly unlikely we'll be on the menu. As long as the alien dinosaurs' proteins are the mirror image of our own, they would be unable to metabolize our flesh. Our planet would be to them what a dinner party at Hannibal Lecter's house would be to most, nice atomsphere, sure, but nothing you'd really wanna eat.
hey, what can i say? Art imitates life, even in a galaxy far, far away. Goodnight kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment