The Russian village is dead. If we drive a hundred to one hundred and fifty kilometers from Moscow in any direction, then as soon as the dachas run out - we have long reconciled ourselves to the fact that around big cities they have ousted the village - what will we see? The skeleton of a farm, overgrown with low forest field. The once densely built-up village street gapes with emptiness: the inhabitants who are still in the village heat their blackened shacks with falling skates with firewood, sawn from neighboring houses. Every time I come to my beloved Kostroma region, I am deeply discouraged. Every winter takes away one or two peasants - drunkenness is mainly to blame.
The former collective-farm economy even ceases to be ruins, it simply disappears into the damp earth. It becomes completely incomprehensible, but who really feeds Russia?
Thirty years ago, when I first came to the village, this question was easier to answer.
1978, autumn holidays. Friends of my parents took me, an eight-year-old boy, to the Kostroma region, where they had a house. Since then I have been traveling to these parts. Now I understand very well that the dying of the Russian village began much earlier, because even then many of them were abandoned, extinct, quiet. Quite often it was like this: you walk across the field, and someone will say: here is Bersenevo, and there is Motorugino, there is Dor. You look around - there is nothing. Where are these villages? Yes, there, you see, there are three birches - this is Bersenevo, and there, where the Christmas trees are, - Dor. There were no more villages.
But this was not the case everywhere. Like a beautiful dream, I remember village pictures, full of life and mysterious peasant meaning: meadows mowed so evenly, so short! They looked like the fur of a freshly plucked fox terrier. Strongly creamed haystacks supported by poles. Planted fields everywhere. For us, urban travelers, this was a difficulty. It is not easy to walk along a rye or barley field: it is a pity to trample the ears, but until you find a path ... But walking in a flax field is not worse! Flax grows densely, and its fibrous stems get tangled in the legs. But how it blooms! We had a lot of flax in the Kostroma region, it was then taken to Kostroma, to the flax mill. Now he works on Dutch raw materials, he does not have his own.
Thirty years ago, old household items were alive and actively used in the village: rocker arms, wooden butter churns made from a pine trunk, wooden troughs for livestock. In every house, though more and more in the attic, spinning wheels and looms were kept. This is on private farms. And in the collective farm in every second village there was a farm, there were cattle. The collective farm herd was a natural disaster for gardeners. From the "flock" eternally and hopelessly drunk rural shepherds built complex barrier systems, supplying them with barbed wire.
But every morning at six o'clock a milk truck went from our farm to the district center called Bui, and it was possible, asking the driver Viktor Ivanovich to get into the cab, hit the road to the city. And on Saturdays there were dances and fights in the club. In a word, there was life in the countryside, there were inhabitants, and these villagers fed Russia.
But I remember: adults, going to the village, in a separate package take circles of boiled-smoked "Krakow", several packs of Azerbaijani tea, a jar of instant drink "Summer", a couple of jars of sprats. With what gratitude our village acquaintances accepted these simple gifts! Yes, they had cellars full of raspberry jam and salted nigella (they were served on the table in sour cream), they had their own milk and cottage cheese. But they were completely deprived of the "shopping" one. But they did not live in complete isolation from the world, and some people already had televisions. They knew that there was coffee, that the city people indulged in sausage, and, of course, they wanted all this. What did rural shops offer to those who fed Russia? Once, my cousin and I - we were ten years old - were sent on a tractor to a neighboring village to a store, instructed to buy bread and - naive parents - tea. We returned home victoriously holding a broom and a bag of bay leaves in our hands: we bought everything that was in the store. In fact, there was bread in the morning, but by the time we arrived, it had already been sold out to feed the calves. And there was nothing else in the store.
This is how the Soviet collective farmers lived in the late seventies: in abundance there was only what the land and forest gives. And manufactured goods - from rubber boots to refrigerators - all this was a dream, a dream of a city, of "real life." Ten years will pass, and their children will go to the city for this dream, leaving endangered villages and fields overgrown with small forests. However, restoring social justice, the peasant always dragged from the farm, from the collective farm everything that could be dragged away. Recently, one of my village acquaintances, characterizing his neighbor with the causticity characteristic of the villagers, said: “Yes, he worked as a foreman on a farm, in his whole life he has not bought a light bulb or a carnation in a store.”
After perestroika, the supply in the village became better. In the 90s, consumer goods appeared. The collective farm still somehow worked, and, going on duty, the milkmaids took with them two large 15-liter buckets - they returned home with milk. Cottage cheese made from homemade and collective farm milk was sold at the market in the city. It was possible to live. It was also easy to feed livestock: at night they went to the farm for mixed fodder with sacks of granulated sugar - 50 kilograms of a walker. Such a kind of rural communism: to each according to his needs.
But the children were leaving, and no one could keep them. Opportunities unheard of under the Soviet regime opened up for them in the cities: private construction firms hired painters, DEZs hired janitors. Only the children of very bitter drunkards remained in the village: they were often born disabled.
At the end of the 1990s, the collective farm collapsed, every year the herd was halved, and now there are three cows left in our village. The farm was dismantled into bricks and sold. The final chord was the excavations arranged by our men. Over the course of several years, they dug a trench one and a half meters deep and several kilometers long. It is still unknown who was the first to discover that a thick copper cable was buried in their native land, going from nowhere to nowhere. They said that it was almost a government connection. In the city, "government communications" were charged at 65 rubles per kilo.
Now none of these men are alive anymore: they died of drunkenness. In five years, when the last collective farmers die, our village will be empty, but in essence nothing will change. She has been gone for a long time. But who feeds Russia? Where are those wonderful places, flood meadows, where fat herds roam and where heavy golden ears bend to the ground? Where do the farmers and shepherds live, the fruits of whose hands feed us, the townspeople? Is it only in Canada and New Zealand?
"Is there life after death?" - a question that we have to think about sooner or later. We are all mortal and we know it.
And the answer to that question is yes, definitely. Our existence as human beings with self-awareness, will, feelings, relationships with others does not end with the death of the body. But how exactly?
When I was a schoolboy, it was believed that death is irreversible: a person died - and his consciousness faded forever, there is only a “grateful memory of descendants” or “great accomplishments” in which a person managed to participate while he was alive. This followed from materialism - a worldview that was then an indispensable part of the official ideology. This ideology is a thing of the past, but materialism itself has not disappeared. As British cosmologist Stephen Hawking beautifully puts this point of view, “...I view the brain as a computer that will stop functioning as soon as its components stop working. There is no heaven or life after death for broken computers; this is a fairy tale for people who are afraid of the dark.”
According to this point of view, in reality there is only matter, which moves in accordance with the impersonal and immutable laws of nature, and everything else, including our thoughts, feelings, experiences, decisions, hopes and fears, is the result of some incredibly complex, but purely material processes in our cerebral cortex. When we die, these processes stop forever.
The materialistic point of view has two interesting features: first, it is blatantly wrong; secondly, it is very popular. Let's start with popularity. Matter is what we can control, where we can increase our power. The natural sciences, which deal with matter, have been extremely successful, and the technologies based on them have profoundly transformed our lives. The attraction of materialism is that the laws of nature are carried out exactly on schedule. It seems that we just need to figure out this exact schedule for all cases - and everything will be under control.
The temptation to reduce all reality to matter that we can eventually control is understandable. But in reality there are things that cannot be reduced to matter. This is primarily human consciousness and free will. In a materialistic universe, every event is completely determined by previous events and the immutable laws of nature - that is, materialism leaves no room not only for God, but for such a directly experienced phenomenon as free will.
As another scientist (and also an atheist), Francis Crick, said, “You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and aspirations, your sense of personal identity and free will, are really nothing more than the certain behavior of a huge collection of nerve cells and their associated molecules. . You are nothing more than a bunch of neurons… even though we seem to have free will, our decisions are already predetermined for us and we cannot change that.”
To be a materialist, one must regard free will as an illusion, which is both contrary to our experience and logically absurd: to become a materialist, you must perform an act of free will; if materialism is correct, there is no free will. Materialism has a number of other unsolvable problems - human consciousness, in principle, cannot be reduced to processes in the brain. The main argument against a positive answer to the question "Is there life after death" is based simply on false philosophy. Reality is not limited to matter.
But do we have positive arguments in favor of immortality? Of course. Let's start with such a phenomenon as universal human intuition. In virtually all cultures, it is taken for granted that the dead continue to exist in some other form. The most ancient people clearly differ from animals in that they bury their dead - with clear expressions of faith in the afterlife. In the burial places they find the remains of food, weapons, jewelry, clothes - everything that was supposed to be needed by the deceased on the other side. With the advent of writing, we find texts with rather detailed ideas about the afterlife, which vary greatly in different cultures, but always have one thing in common: life continues after death, and how exactly it continues, usually depends on the behavior of a person on this earth.
The belief that physical death means the disappearance of the individual has always been (and still is) the lot of a minority. Another argument is from conscience. We realize that there is a difference between good and evil, that evil deeds are worthy of condemnation, while good deeds are worthy of praise. We experience anxiety and anxiety when our conscience convicts us of something bad. If there is no afterlife (and retribution), then this experience is illusory. Then the villains who commit all kinds of atrocities and sleep like a baby are absolutely right: if they escape human retribution (which is quite likely), nothing else threatens them. But if conscience is not an illusion, then the reward is real. And if it is not accomplished in this life, then this life is not all that is.
But there are more direct data about life after death. The so-called near-death experience that people experience in a state of clinical death. Most of the survivors of clinical death do not remember anything, but about 10% can tell that they got out of their body and saw it from the side. They can tell what happened in the operating room, describe the actions of doctors, sometimes they talk about meeting with deceased loved ones and the mysterious Light that shows them their whole life. It's an experience that quite a few people have had, and it's impossible to just brush it off. As the American resuscitator (agnostic in his personal convictions) Sam Parnia writes,
“We usually assume that all scientists believe that consciousness is a product of the brain, but, in fact, many are not sure about this. For example, Sir John Eccles, a Nobel laureate, believes that we will never be able to explain consciousness in terms of neuronal activity. All I can say is that I have observed in the course of my work. It seems that when consciousness is switched off at the moment of death, the psyche, the soul - I do not mean the ghost, I mean the individual "I" - continues to exist, at least for those hours until the person is reanimated. From which we can justifiably conclude that the brain works as an instrument through which your "I" or "soul" manifests itself, but it may not be its source ... I think the data is starting to indicate that we should stay open to the possibility that memory… is not just the activity of neurons.”
These descriptions of near-death experiences fit well with the Christian picture of the afterlife that we know from Scripture and Tradition. Immediately after death, the soul leaves the body, and the person continues to exist - to be aware of what is happening, to rejoice or suffer, to think and remember - in another plane of reality.
Scripture calls the place where the souls of faithful Christians go "heaven." To heaven Already wrote. An inexpressibly joyful place, full of light and consolation. As the holy apostle Paul says, For we know, what, when terrestrial our house, this hut, collapse, we we have from God dwelling on the heaven, house miraculous, eternal. From Togo we and sigh, wanting put on in heavenly our dwelling(2 Cor 5 :1–2). In the face of inevitable (and at the same time violent) death, the apostle joyfully awaits the migration to heaven: I have a wish resolve and to be co Christ, because what this is incomparably better(Phil 1 :23).
There, in heaven, we will meet with that Light in which we will forever be comforted for all earthly sorrows - with our Lord Jesus Christ, with our loving heavenly family - the Mother of the Lord and all the saints; there, in heaven, we will look forward to the final victory of the Lord in the world and the resurrection of the dead - for the day will come when God will restore us in glorified and transfigured bodies.
But this is not only a matter for the future; faith in immortality changes our lives here and now, it colors all the days of our lives, it deeply affects how we accept the sorrows and joys of our earthly path. Faith is an openness to Heaven, where we are loved, expected and accepted when our path is completed.
Find out if there is life in the universe other than Earth. Here you will find comments from other users, whether there is life in heaven, whether there is other life in the Galaxy, whether there are other forms of life.
Answer:
Many religions teach us that life continues after death, only in heaven. Including Christianity. Whether there is life in the Universe is another question, which, however, interests people no less.
Throughout history, people have believed in the existence of God. This conclusion was reached by billions of inhabitants of our planet with different social status, in different emotional states, different mindsets. What is the chance that each of them could be wrong? Even anthropological research confirms that a universal belief in God existed even in the most primitive communities.
Is there life beyond our ordinary existence? This can be proved already by the complexity of the structure of our planet. It can be assumed that God not only created it, but also tries to maintain life. In addition to the Earth, it is still unknown what exactly he can be responsible for.
And only a mind that surpasses the human could create our own so complex and multifaceted. After all, in a second we are able to process information in huge quantities. So far, science has not yet found an exact explanation for everything that happens in our head.
Is there other life in space?
Surely every person, and more than once, asked himself the question, is there life on Venus and Saturn, on the Sun and Jupiter? Scientists have been conducting numerous studies for many years, trying to find signs of life, even small ones. Neighbors in the Sun are of interest to them first of all, as well as to us.
The greenhouse effect and powerful atmosphere led scientists to call Venus the sister of the Earth. Many astronomers are sure that there used to be seas and oceans here, although now the surface is rocky and deserted. Is there other life on this planet? Hopes are unlikely to come true, because the atmosphere itself is now not very suitable for living forms.
On Jupiter, according to scientists, intelligent life is also almost impossible. In many ways - due to the fact that the planet is practically devoid of a rocky surface, hurricanes constantly rage on it. But the satellites of this planet are of much greater interest. Because they are most similar to our native Earth.
But researchers do not exclude the presence of the simplest organisms on Saturn. Sedimentary organic matter and water ice predominate on its surface, but this does not force us to completely abandon the idea of the development of living forms of life under such conditions.
Are there other forms of life?
People have always wondered if there are other forms of life in the Galaxy, Space, in addition to those that we encounter on our Earth. The search for evidence of this theory began from the very moment that research expeditions into space became available to us. Already after the first flights, we began to launch special devices in order to conduct research.
Many experts say that somewhere in the depths of the Universe, at least 9 more civilizations may exist. Three of them noticeably lag behind us in terms of development, three are approximately on the same level with us, and three more are superior.
Modern science is not yet ready to completely exclude the existence of other life forms, which, among other things, may be similar to us. Conclusions about the existence of other forms of life can be drawn, even based on the notion that our universe is infinite.
Representatives of a civilization that are on an identical branch of evolution may turn out to be similar to us.
Amino acids and hydrocarbons found in one of the meteorites studied by NASA specialists are considered irrefutable proof of organic life forms in space. It is believed that it is on these elements that all life in the Universe is generally based.
Is there life after death - this question is asked by every person, regardless of their beliefs. Almost all known religions of the world claim that after the death of the physical body, human life continues. Absolutely all beliefs convince - the human soul is an immortal body.
All of us during our lives are interested in an entertaining question, what is there ... after death? Many people who have experienced clinical death talk about amazing visions: they observe themselves from the side, hear how doctors state their death. They feel like they are rushing at great speed through a long dark tunnel towards a bright source of light.
Doctors, including resuscitators, very much doubt the reality of the described visions, which are allegedly experienced by those who visited the afterlife while in a state of clinical death. The reason for such near-death visions is called a light spot, which, being the last one to enter the brain from the retina of the eye, deposits a picture on the center of the brain responsible for analyzing what it saw.
However, devices that record the activity of the brain at the time of death of a person show its zero activity. In other words, the brain and, accordingly, the imagination cannot process information at this moment, but vivid images of a person still exist and originate somewhere.
There is not a single person for whom the experience of clinical death passed without a trace. Many of them begin to have supernatural powers. Someone sees the future, someone begins to heal, some see parallel worlds.Some tell fantastic things, claiming that at the moment of death they saw their soul separating from the body in the form of a small cloud, in the middle of which there was, as it were, a spark. Everything has a spheroidal shape from the atom to the planets, including the human soul, says a woman who experienced clinical death, and after which she began to notice many luminous balls around her and on the street.
Researchers suggest that the human soul is a clot of spherical energy 3-15 cm in size, and supersensitive devices are able to detect such luminous balls. On this basis, a hypothesis was born about parallel worlds, and supposedly in the thinnest boundaries of contact of these worlds with our world, such phenomena with balls can be observed.
There are an abundance of hypotheses, but the most interesting thing is that all those who experienced clinical death claimed in their desire to fly further to the light that some kind of unearthly love is where the light is. However, not everyone sees the light at the moment of death, some claim that they have observed the suffering of people and very unpleasant odors. It was very scary there.
In this case, the theory of scientists about the last light spot from the retina is not supported by anything. All those who experienced clinical death underwent a spiritual transformation and came to God. Today they look at the world differently, they are not afraid of death, although they cannot describe everything in words, but much is already clear to them and no arguments of scientists can convince them.
Today, many scientists doubt the truth of their assumptions, and do not deny the spiritual origin of what eyewitnesses tell, and yet continue research in this area. We do not have instruments to measure divine values, but who knows, maybe technologies will appear, we will be able to find out with the help of instruments what is there, at the end of the mysterious tunnel!
LIFE AFTER DEATH
Death is the eternal companion of man from birth. She invariably pursues a person and every moment gets closer and closer. Fortunately, no one knows when Death will make its swift jump, since a person is not supposed to know the reason and time of his departure to the realm of the dead.
Whoever a person is in life, the end of the life path is the same for everyone. Everyone knows about this event, but the deep secret that lies beyond life attracts thousands of years to look behind the secret door of Death.
A little about the mysteries of what is happening was told in the 1970s by the American professor Raymond Moody in the book that became the bestseller Life After Death. The author collected in the publication of the history of 150 people who survived clinical death.
People who have experienced the horror of clinical death after returning, now feel more vitally active, assure survivors of their own death. Much more fully than usual, they accept everything that happens and feel the environment more intensely than it was before.
According to those interviewed, most of them heard how medical workers ascertained their death, but continued to fight for their lives. In these frightening moments, they allegedly painlessly left their own body and soared to the ceiling of the ward or operating room.
We find it hard to believe this, since it is well known that in a state of clinical death, the human brain does not receive the necessary oxygen, without which it can function for a few minutes. Clinical death is a complete cessation of blood circulation, and after that the restoration of the normal working capacity of the brain is rather a matter of divine powers and great luck.
Most medical professionals agree that the experience of near-death visions is created in the imagination at the moment of loss of vital functions. At the same time, there are serious controversies regarding what exactly should be understood by vital functions and their termination.
According to the researchers of near-death visions, not all pictures in the moment of "imaginary death" are the fruit of fantasy, a number of them represent a true picture of the afterlife.
The probability of the existence of life on other planets is determined by the scale of the universe. That is, the larger the Universe, the greater the probability of the accidental emergence of life somewhere in its remote corners. Since, according to modern classical models of the universe, it is infinite in space, it seems that the probability of the existence of life on other planets is growing rapidly. This issue will be discussed in more detail towards the end of the article, since you will have to start with the presentation of the alien life itself, the definition of which is rather vague.
For some reason, until recently, humanity had a clear idea of alien life in the form of gray humanoids with large heads. However, modern films, literary works, following the development of the most scientific approach to this issue, are increasingly going beyond the above ideas. Indeed, the Universe is quite diverse and, given the complex evolution of the human species, the likelihood of similar life forms on different planets with different physical conditions is extremely small.
First of all, it is necessary to go beyond the concept of life as it is on Earth, since we are considering life on other planets. Looking around, we understand that all terrestrial forms of life known to us are just such for a reason, but due to the existence of certain physical conditions on Earth, a couple of which we will consider further.
gravity
The first and most obvious terrestrial physical condition is . For the gravity on another planet to be exactly the same, it would need exactly the same mass and the same radius. For this to be possible, it is likely that another planet would have to be composed of the same elements as the Earth. This will also require a number of other conditions, as a result of which the probability of finding such an "Earth clone" is rapidly falling. For this reason, if we intend to find all possible extraterrestrial life forms, we should assume the possibility of their existence on planets with a slightly different gravity. Of course, some range must be defined for gravity, such as to hold the atmosphere and at the same time not to flatten all life on the planet.
Within this range, a wide variety of life forms are possible. First of all, gravity affects the growth of living organisms. Remembering the most famous gorilla in the world - King Kong, it should be noted that he would not have survived on Earth, as he would have died under the pressure of his own weight. The reason for this is the square-cube law, according to which, with an increase in the body twice, its mass increases by 8 times. Therefore, if we consider a planet with reduced gravity, we should expect the discovery of life forms in large sizes.
Also, the strength of the skeleton and muscles depends on the strength of gravity on the planet. Recalling another example from the animal world, namely the largest animal - the blue whale, we note that if it hits land, the whale suffocates. However, this happens not because they suffocate like fish (whales are mammals, and therefore they breathe not with gills, but with lungs, like people), but because gravity prevents their lungs from expanding. It follows from this that in conditions of increased gravity, a person would have stronger bones that could support body weight, stronger muscles that could resist gravity, and a shorter stature to reduce the actual body weight itself according to the square-cube law.
The listed physical characteristics of the body, which depend on gravity, are just our ideas about the effect of gravity on the body. In fact, gravity can determine a much larger range of body parameters.
Atmosphere
Another global physical condition that determines the form of living organisms is the atmosphere. First of all, by the presence of an atmosphere, we will deliberately narrow the circle of planets with the possibility of life, since scientists cannot imagine organisms that can survive without auxiliary elements of the atmosphere and with the deadly influence of cosmic radiation. Therefore, suppose that a planet with living organisms must have an atmosphere. First, let's look at the atmosphere with the oxygen content that we are all so accustomed to.
Consider, for example, insects, whose size is clearly limited due to the characteristics of the respiratory system. It does not include the lungs and consists of tracheal tunnels that open outward in the form of holes - spiracles. This type of oxygen transportation does not allow insects to have a mass of more than 100 grams, since it loses its effectiveness at large sizes.
The Carboniferous period (350-300 million years BC) was characterized by an increased oxygen content in the atmosphere (by 30-35%), and the animals inherent in that time may surprise you. Namely, giant air-breathing insects. For example, the dragonfly Meganeura could have a wingspan of more than 65 cm, the scorpion Pulmonoscorpius could reach 70 cm, and the centipede Arthropleura could be 2.3 meters in length.
Thus, the influence of the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere on the range of different life forms becomes apparent. In addition, the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere is not a solid condition for the existence of life, since anaerobes are known to mankind - organisms that can live without oxygen consumption. Then if the influence of oxygen on organisms is so high, what would be the form of life on planets with a completely different composition of the atmosphere? - it's difficult to imagine.
So before us there is an unthinkably large set of life forms that can expect us on another planet, given only the two factors listed above. If we consider other conditions, such as temperature or atmospheric pressure, then the diversity of living organisms goes beyond perception. But even in this case, scientists are not afraid to make bolder assumptions, defined in alternative biochemistry:
- Many are convinced that all forms of life can exist only if they contain carbon, as is observed on Earth. Carl Sagan called this phenomenon "carbon chauvinism". But in fact, the main building block of alien life may not be carbon at all. Among the alternatives to carbon, scientists identify silicon, nitrogen and phosphorus or nitrogen and boron.
- Phosphorus is also one of the main elements that make up a living organism, as it is part of nucleotides, nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and other compounds. However, in 2010, astrobiologist Felisa Wolf-Simon discovered a bacterium in which phosphorus is replaced by arsenic in all cellular components, by the way, toxic to all other organisms.
- Water is one of the most important components for life on Earth. However, water can also be replaced with another solvent, according to scientists, it can be ammonia, hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen cyanide and even sulfuric acid.
Why did we consider the above-described possible forms of life on other planets? The fact is that with the increase in the diversity of living organisms, the boundaries of the term life itself are blurred, which, by the way, still does not have an explicit definition.
The concept of alien life
Since the subject of this article is not intelligent beings, but living organisms, the concept of "living" should be defined. As it turned out, this is quite a difficult task and there are more than 100 definitions of life. But, in order not to delve into philosophy, let's follow in the footsteps of scientists. Chemists and biologists should have the broadest concept of life. Based on the usual signs of life, such as reproduction or nutrition, some crystals, prions (infectious proteins) or viruses can be attributed to living beings.
A true definition of the boundary between living and non-living organisms must be formulated before the question of the existence of life on other planets arises. Biologists consider such a borderline form - viruses. By themselves, without interacting with the cells of living organisms, viruses do not have most of the characteristics of a living organism familiar to us and are only particles of biopolymers (complexes of organic molecules). For example, they do not have a metabolism; for their further reproduction, some kind of host cell belonging to another organism will be required.
Thus, it is possible to conditionally draw a line between living and non-living organisms passing through an extensive layer of viruses. That is, the discovery of a virus-like organism on another planet can be both a confirmation of the existence of life on other planets, and another useful discovery, but not confirming this assumption.
According to the above, most chemists and biologists are inclined to believe that the main sign of life is DNA replication - the synthesis of a daughter molecule based on the parent DNA molecule. Having such views on alien life, we have significantly moved away from the already hackneyed images of green (gray) men.
However, the problems of defining an object as a living organism can arise not only with viruses. Considering the variety of possible types of living beings indicated earlier, one can imagine a situation when a person encounters some alien substance (for ease of presentation - the size of the order of a person), and raises the question of the life of this substance - the search for an answer to this question may turn out to be just as difficult, as is the case with viruses. This problem is seen in the work of Stanislav Lem "Solaris".
Extraterrestrial life in the solar system
Kepler is a 22b planet with possible life
Today, the criteria for the search for life on other planets are quite strict. Among them, in priority: the presence of water, the atmosphere, and temperature regimes similar to those on Earth. To possess these characteristics, the planet must be in the so-called "habitable zone of the star" - that is, at a certain distance from the star, depending on the type of this star. Among the most popular are: Gliese 581 g, Kepler-22 b, Kepler-186 f, Kepler-452 b and others. However, today one can only guess about the presence of life on such planets, since it will not be possible to fly to them soon, due to the huge distance to them (one of the nearest Gliese is 581 g, which is 20 light years away). Therefore, let's return to our solar system, where in fact there are also signs of unearthly life.
Mars
According to the criteria for the existence of life, some of the planets of the solar system have suitable conditions. For example, subliming (evaporating) was discovered on Mars - a step towards the discovery of liquid water. In addition, methane, a well-known waste product of living organisms, was found in the atmosphere of the red planet. Thus, even on Mars, there is the possibility of the existence of living organisms, albeit simple ones, in certain warm places with less aggressive conditions, such as the polar caps.
Europe
The well-known satellite of Jupiter is a rather cold (-160 ° C - -220 ° C) celestial body covered with a thick layer of ice. However, a number of research results (movement of Europa's crust, the presence of induced currents in the core) are increasingly leading scientists to the idea of the existence of a liquid water ocean under surface ice. Moreover, in the case of existence, the size of this ocean exceeds the size of the world ocean of the Earth. The heating of this liquid water layer of Europa is most likely due to gravitational influence, which compresses and stretches the moon, causing tides. As a result of observation of the satellite, signs of ejections of water vapor from geysers at a speed of about 700 m/s to a height of up to 200 km were also recorded. In 2009, the American scientist Richard Greenberg showed that under the surface of Europa there is oxygen in volumes sufficient for the existence of complex organisms. Given other reported data on Europe, it is safe to assume the possibility of the existence of complex organisms, albeit like fish, that live closer to the bottom of the subsurface ocean, where hydrothermal vents appear to be located.
Enceladus
The most promising habitat for living organisms is Saturn's satellite -. Somewhat similar to Europa, this satellite differs from all other cosmic bodies in the solar system in that it has found liquid water, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen in the form of ammonia. Moreover, the sounding results are confirmed by real photographs of huge fountains of water spouting from cracks in the ice surface of Enceladus. Putting together the evidence, scientists claim the presence of a subsurface ocean under the south pole of Enceladus, whose temperature ranges from -45°C to +1°C. Although there are estimates according to which the ocean temperature can even reach +90. Even if the ocean temperature is not high, we still know the fish living in the waters of Antarctica at zero temperature (White-blooded fish).
In addition, the data obtained by the apparatus and processed by scientists from the Carnegie Institute made it possible to find out the alkalinity of the ocean environment, which is 11-12 pH. This indicator is quite favorable for the birth, as well as the maintenance of life.
Is there life on other planets?
So we got to the assessment of the probability of the existence of alien life. All of the above is optimistic. Based on the wide variety of terrestrial living organisms, it can be concluded that even on the most “harsh” planet-twin of the Earth, a living organism can arise, albeit completely different from those familiar to us. Even when exploring the cosmic bodies of the solar system, we find nooks and crannies of a seemingly dead world, not like Earth, in which nevertheless there are favorable conditions for carbon-based life forms. Our beliefs about the prevalence of life in the Universe are further strengthened by the possibility of the existence of not carbon-based life forms, but some alternative ones that use some other substances, such as silicon or ammonia, instead of carbon, water and other organic substances. Thus, the allowable conditions for life on another planet are greatly expanded. Multiplying all this by the size of the Universe, more specifically, by the number of planets, we get a fairly high probability of the emergence and maintenance of alien life.
There is only one problem that arises before astrobiologists, as well as before all of humanity - we do not know how life arises. That is, how and where to get at least the simplest microorganisms on other planets? The probability of the origin of life itself, even under favorable conditions, we cannot estimate. Therefore, the assessment of the probability of the existence of living alien organisms is extremely difficult.
If the transition from chemical compounds to living organisms is defined as a natural biological phenomenon, like the unauthorized combination of a complex of organic elements into a living organism, then the probability of the emergence of such an organism is high. In this case, one can say that one way or another life would have appeared on Earth, having in the presence of those organic compounds that it had, and observing the physical conditions that it observed. However, scientists have not figured out the nature of this transition and the factors that can influence it. Therefore, among the factors affecting the very emergence of life, there can be anything, such as the temperature of the solar wind or the distance to a neighboring star system.
Assuming that it takes only time for the emergence and existence of life in habitable conditions, and no more unexplored interactions with external forces, we can say that the probability of finding living organisms in our galaxy is quite high, this probability exists even in our solar system. If we consider the Universe as a whole, then based on all of the above, we can say with great confidence that there is life on other planets.
