Word: cosmos
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOS...
Traditionally, biologists believed that life is a freak--the result of a zillion-to-one accidental concatenation of molecules. It follows that the likelihood of its happening again elsewhere in the cosmos is infinitesimal. This viewpoint derives from the second law of thermodynamics, which predicts that the universe is dying--slowly and inexorably degenerating toward a state of total chaos. Life bucks this trend only because it is a statistical fluke...
Weighed against these threatening factors is the uplifting picture of the universe that the ubiquity of life and consciousness implies. A cosmos that starts out in a sterile Big Bang and gradually progresses through complex chemistry to life, intelligence and culture--and sentient beings who can look back and reflect on the meaning of it all--is profoundly inspiring. The fact that this advance can take place entirely naturally, without divine intervention, adds to the wonder...
Bertrand Russell argued that a universe under a death sentence from the second law of thermodynamics rendered human life ultimately futile. All our achievements, all our struggles, "all the noonday brightness of human genius," as he put it, would, in the final analysis, count for nothing if the very cosmos itself is doomed...
...message may well be received first in a quiet rural setting 30 miles northwest of Boston. There, atop a hill overlooking a snow-covered apple orchard and the frozen remnants of a pumpkin patch, a dish-shaped antenna, 84 ft. across, faces skyward, attuned to the murmurings of the cosmos...