Saturday, January 16, 2010

Meaning of life and everything...

History of our earth:

The earth is apparently 4.6 billion years old. Here is the earth's time clock as scientists believe it to be:

"For a nearly a fifth of its existence it was cooling down - crust melted, cooled remelted and cooled again. It took another 300 million years before life had evolved enough to produce the oldest known fossils.  For the next 3 billion years life on Earth had evolved so much that early dinosaurs appeared. Dinosaurs dominated the earth for 185 million year (nearly twice as long as mammals have existed). Age of the mammals lasted for about 65 million years and man-like creatures have been around for about 4 million years!"

(The above information is from the book "Marvels and Mysteries of the world around us" published by Reader's digest. I just love the book. Its easy to read and has brilliant illustrations and pictures.)

So recently my mind had been pondering about this whole meaning for the existence of life on earth and more so ever on the existence of complex creatures, that's us humans.

There is this book 'The hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy' by Douglas Adams. I read this book few years ago. I remember a very funny part in the book, where in a galaxy far far away there is a complex computer called 'Deep Thought' which is fed the question "what is the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything..." The computer takes seven and a half million years and comes up with the answer as '42' to the despair of the men who fed the question in the computer. The computer says that is the answer to the question. It also says that the question has to be understood properly for the answer to be satisfactory and adds that it will build a more complex super organic computer to understand the question which would be called the 'Earth'. The men in that part of the galaxy wonder about the strange name - Earth.

As I sit here worrying about the long list of things to be done, making plans and time for everything I need to do to keep my mind in peace I just can't help but wonder what on earth am I doing here.




2 comments:

  1. Knowing the answer to "what you are doing on earth" takes the fun out of living. The search for the answer is the eternal journey and keeps things moving. I have stopped searching for an answer and instead started enjoying every minute.

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  2. Other than being overwhelmed by this boundless universe and the singular personality of Earth
    to make life possible I am more amazed by the complex brain that humans possess to actually
    have the ability to marvel the wonders, question the mysteries around us and the ability to design ways to understand them. Looking for an answer or meaning for existence (if there is one) is probably far fetched but I am fascinated by the human quest to unravel the unknown.

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