Alien life may have evolved just after Big Bang
Credit: zeenews.india.com/ |
Alien life may have evolved just
after Big Bang
New York: Exoplanets may
have been teeming with alien microbial life just 15 million years after the Big
Bang, according to a Harvard scientist.
Exoplanets
that orbit far beyond the habitable zone may have been able to support life in
the distant past, warmed by the relic radiation left over from the Big Bang
that created the universe 13.8 billion years ago, said astrophysicist Abraham
Loeb from the Harvard University.
This
suggests that Earthlings may be extreme latecomers to a universe full of life.
The earliest evidence of life on Earth dates from 3.8 billion years ago, about
700 million years after our planet formed.
The universe
was a much hotter place just after the Big Bang. It was filled with sizzling
plasma - superheated gas - that gradually cooled.
The first
light produced by this plasma is the cosmic microwave background radiation
(CMB) that we observe today, which dates from about 389,000 years after the Big
Bang.
Now, the CMB
is freezing cold - around minus 270 degrees Celsius. It cooled down gradually
with the expansion of the cosmos, and at some point during the cooling process,
for a brief period of seven million years or so, the temperature was just right
for life to form. Read more >>
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