I was sitting outside in my hot tub (“spa”) this morning enjoying the splendid view of my favorite constellation friends; Orion, Taurus, The Pleiades, Gemini, Canis Major, Cassiopeia, Perseus, and a few others. The weather was perfect for star gazing with a moonless morning; 55F, no wind, clear skies and quiet. I like to lay my head back and just watch – today I saw 5 meteors (I suppose they might represent an early start on the Orionids which are leftover pieces of Halley’s comet). I usually spot 10 to 15 satellites and perhaps one or two meteors during my 15 to 30 minute morning soak. I didn’t see any satellites this morning – perhaps I was too early in the day for them.

In any case, while semi-dozing and watching the stars I got to thinking about where it all came from. The current theory is that it all started with a big bang – and then things just happened after that. The “just happened after that” part is the job of “science” to describe. Once the bang happened it seems that the rules of physics came along for the ride, resulting in all there is. Things just are because they are. Perhaps a different bang would have resulted in different rules – or not.

The mystery for me isn’t so much about how the universe evolved following the bang, but instead – what banged??? If the universe is something and the pre-universe isn’t that, then does that mean it is nothing (no thing)? How could nothing bang into existence? Or are we just some sort of fluctuation around zero so that from the BIG picture point of view there is still nothing. Not only did this big bang apparently happen, but the scales (energy, mass, distances, time) involved are unimaginably huge. “How very odd” is about as far as I can get along this line of thought. The story seems to be that there was (perhaps is) nothing at all, no anything, no energy, no waves, no ….. nothing. Then “it” (nothing) got really bored and turned into everything – all at once! This didn’t even happen in a flash because it was so dense that nothing could flash. It is more like the universe was vomited into being. Maybe “it” rolled over in bed.

Once the change happened, then the physics geniuses can play their favorite math games and describe how it evolved into atoms, and molecules, and galaxies, and stars, and eventually “us” – but they can say nothing about the transition, or before the transition. Interestingly, apparently there was no “before the transition” because there was no time and time is necessary for a “before”. This odd state of affairs turns the entire discussion into a pseudo-discussion because there was actually nothing to discuss.

The results of this pondering was a simple, “huh??” Not being ready to give up on useless pondering, as the trees become visible in the pre-dawn light I got to wondering about the nature of life on earth. I have already discussed my revelation that all existing life has always been alive and thus was never “born” or created except when it all started 3 billion or so years ago. Of course a lot of things have died since that time, but none of the things that are alive now have died yet. The thread of life is continuous, and apparently arising from the same event all those billions of years ago. We (every current life form) are all “cousins”.

But I wonder if that is actually true. It appears to be true, but I keep wondering about two other possibilities. One possibility is that there were initially many different starts of life, but only one survived to the present. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence of this happening, but it certainly seems like a reasonable possibility. However, to me the more mysterious question has to with whether it all started with a single molecule randomly achieving the kind of self-replication that resulted in the ability to replicate, mutate and diverge into the splendid diversity we enjoy, or did it start with a lot of pools of gunk (molecules) all of which acquired the necessarily characteristics.

A thought experiment might help clarify my question. Consider a lab experiment where a bunch of precursor molecules were mixed in a vat (or a test tube) in such a way that “the beginning” life molecule was formed. Would we have billions of “the beginning” molecules that then go on to create billions of new threads of life (albeit all of them identical, or nearly so), or would only one such molecule form creating just one thread of life? If it is the former, then my idea that life all goes back to a single beginning is false – it goes back to billions and billions of single beginnings. If so, then life comes from billions of beginnings, and we are not cousins at all. We are all based upon complex crystals (DNA and RNA) formed by the reaction of similar chemicals like two grains of salt – very similar because of the chemistry involved, but not related to or sharing a very long chain of reactions. If this is the case, then I wonder when and how often life has started afresh.

I was once again left with “huh?” – not even knowing if there is a sensible question to be asked. Am I once again pondering another “pseudo-question”?