The Multiverse and Life on Other Planets - Interview with Brian Cox (BC)
BC: What does it mean to live a finite, fragile life in an infinite, eternal universe?
And I think the answer is that... So, paradoxically, whilst we are definitely physically
insignificant, I've just said, you know, that the Earth is one planet around one star
amongst 400 billion stars in one galaxy, amongst two trillion galaxies in a small
patch of the universe, right?
So, we're definitely small, and you can't argue with that; we're just specks of dust.
But if you think about what we are, so everybody, me and you, everybody, we're just
collections Of atoms, right? Some of them are as Old as time, pretty much, and some
of them, the other ones, everything else other than the hydrogen in our bodies, was
made in stars, right? So, we were cooked over billions of years. And we're in this
pattern that can think.
so suddenly, as the great Carl Sagan said, "You have a means by which the universe
understands and explores itself," which is us. And that sounds unlikely when you
put it like that, that you can have a few things that were cooked in the hearts of stars.
You stick them together in a pattern and suddenly it has some ideas and stans writing
music and arts and things. That's quite difficult to comprehend, right? But that
happened here, we know that, because we're sitting here having a conversation.
And so, the question then becomes, well, on how many other worlds did that happen9
And that's where I think the value can come in because it's a reasonable guess and it
is just a guess, right? But it's reasonable. You can make the argument that there aren't
any other worlds where this happened, certainly in our galaxy.
So it could be that this planet, notwithstanding its physical insignificance, is the only place where anything thinks, right? For millions Of light years in every direction.
But suddenly, therefore, you end up considering this planet as being the most valuable place in the local universe, notwithstanding the fact that it's small.
