Sixty Thousand.
Robert Lee Hotz, WSJ, files an astonishing video on the humpback whale population worldwide that was hunted to only 5 thousand on the planet in the 1960s and was one of the first wave on the Endangered Species Act of the 1970s. The protection worked, despite the rogue fleets and the Japanese fleet, and now the humpback is at 60 thousand. A study of the humpback genome has now discovered that the humpback whales in the Indian Ocean are a special variation and do not mix well, and are very few in number . The puzzle is how to protect one nomadic but hermit like subspecies. The puzzle I have is about the 60 thousand number. A tiny finite number. All the humpbacks in the solar system? In the Eden search, we will we find oceans where humpbacks may live. Are there more humpbacks on the Edens of the galaxy than homo sapiens? And if there are, is that the best solution to spreading life? Not us, but humpbacks. I am reminded of one of the lovely early Star Trek movies, with Kirk, Spock, Bones, when the whale creatures come to destroy us until we use a whale to represent us.
My wife and I usually go out for a walk after dinner. Along the way, we always pass by a particular house where invariably a black cat comes (literally) galloping to greet us, roll over on its back at our feet; purring uproariously and, then, getting up to follow us part way down the block.
Actually, at one time, there were two black cats - the one I just described, and another - a larger one - that stayed pretty much in the background, simply observing our daily encounters. On rare occasions, when our usual feline friend happened to be occupied elsewhere, the larger cat would deign to come out of the shadows and grudgingly permit itself to be petted.
The day would come when (suddenly) the smaller cat no longer appeared. Instead, the larger cat would come running up to us exactly as its mate had done. We asked the woman (who was watching us from the porch of the house) what had become of the little cat. She told us that he had been hit by a car and died.
We found this absolutely stunning. I don't know how else one could possibly account for it but, in dying, the smaller cat had apparently transferred its entire personality lock stock and barrel to the larger cat which now continued the antics of its now dead partner precisely to the letter.
In Hinduism, no sharp distinctions can be drawn between gods, men and animals. All these exist in an unbroken line, from the highest down to the lowest. Using Carlos Castaneda's terminology, all are essentially ‘energy shapes’, fractured only by men's minds and egos. No doubt there are other Edens out there where life can flourish. But the physical shape of whatever that life may take is largely irrelevant.
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When, after an intense argument, life threatened to leave the earth, earth laughed and said, "Don't be absurd! Nowhere else will you find my bounty with which to build and power your pathetic little toys.” And life replied, "You're so wrong! Even on the dark side of the moon; even in the outer reaches of space would it be possible for me to find sufficient substance to shape and sculpt. I am infinitely more flexible than you think. I can adapt myself to any condition. I have self-determination and the desire to be. I will go anywhere I want, using whatever means available to give expression to the essence of myself.”
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
I suspect that if our space probes ever locate life elsewhere in the solar system--some scientitsts say that they already did just that well over thirty years ago, on Mars--that subsequent analysis will show enough genetic similarities between it and terrestrial biology to prove a common origin, quite a shocking answer indeed to a cosmic version of 1-800-Who's-Your-Daddy. Then the notion of panspermia devised by Anaxagoras and dusted off by Fred Hoyle will come back into vogue, and we will at last understand that life borne by meteors and comets is as galactically ubiquitous as dandelion seeds are in suburban back yards. And with that realization will come a great many troubling question about the Great Silence encountered by the radio telescopes of our SETI program.