Life in the Universe This lecture is the intellectual property of Professor S.W.Hawking.

You may not reproduce edit translate distri!ute pu!lish or host this document in any way with out the permission of Professor Hawking. "ote that there may !e incorrect spellings punctuation and#or grammar in this document. This is to allow correct pronunciation and timing !y a speech synthesiser. $n this talk $ would like to speculate a little on the development of life in the universe and in particular the development of intelligent life. $ shall take this to include the human race even though much of its !ehaviour through out history has !een pretty stupid and not calculated to aid the survival of the species. Two %uestions $ shall discuss are &What is the pro!a!ility of life e'isting else where in the universe(& and &How may life develop in the future(& $t is a matter of common e'perience that things get more disordered and chaotic with time. This o!servation can !e elevated to the status of a law the so)called Second Law of Thermodynamics. This says that the total amount of disorder or entropy in the universe always increases with time. However the Law refers only to the total amount of disorder. The order in one !ody can increase provided that the amount of disorder in its surroundings increases !y a greater amount. This is what happens in a living !eing. *ne can define Life to !e an ordered system that can sustain itself against the tendency to disorder and can reproduce itself. That is it can make similar !ut independent ordered systems. To do these things the system must convert energy in some ordered form like food sunlight or electric power into disordered energy in the form of heat. $n this way the system can satisfy the re%uirement that the total amount of disorder increases while at the same time increasing the order in itself and its offspring. + living !eing usually has two elements, a set of instructions that tell the system how to sustain and reproduce itself and a mechanism to carry out the instructions. $n !iology these two parts are called genes and meta!olism. -ut it is worth emphasising that there need !e nothing !iological a!out them. .or e'ample a computer virus is a program that will make copies of itself in the memory of a computer and will transfer itself to other computers. Thus it fits the definition of a living system that $ have given. Like a !iological virus it is a rather degenerate form !ecause it contains only instructions or genes and doesn&t have any meta!olism of its own. $nstead it reprograms the meta!olism of the host computer or cell. Some people have %uestioned whether viruses should count as life !ecause they are parasites and can not e'ist independently of their hosts. -ut then most forms of life ourselves included are parasites in that they feed off and depend for their survival on other forms of life. $ think computer viruses should count as life. /ay!e it says something a!out human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk a!out creating life in our own image. $ shall return to electronic forms of life later on. What we normally think of as &life& is !ased on chains of car!on atoms with a few other atoms such as nitrogen or phosphorous. *ne can speculate that one might have life with some other chemical !asis such as silicon !ut car!on seems the most favoura!le case !ecause it has the richest chemistry. That car!on atoms should e'ist at all with the properties that they have re%uires a fine ad0ustment of physical constants such as the 123 scale the electric charge and even the dimension of space)time. $f these constants had significantly different values either the nucleus of the car!on atom would not !e sta!le or the electrons would collapse in on the nucleus. +t first sight it seems remarka!le that the universe is so finely tuned. /ay!e this is evidence that the universe was specially designed to produce the human race. However one has to !e careful a!out such arguments !ecause of what is known as the +nthropic Principle. This is !ased on the self)evident truth that if the universe had not !een suita!le for life we wouldn&t !e asking why it is so finely ad0usted. *ne can apply the +nthropic Principle in either its Strong or Weak versions. .or the Strong +nthropic Principle one supposes that there are many different universes each with different values of the physical constants. $n a small num!er the values will allow the e'istence of o!0ects like car!on atoms which can act as the !uilding !locks

of living systems. Since we must live in one of these universes we should not !e surprised that the physical constants are finely tuned. $f they weren&t we wouldn&t !e here. The strong form of the +nthropic Principle is not very satisfactory. What operational meaning can one give to the e'istence of all those other universes( +nd if they are separate from our own universe how can what happens in them affect our universe. $nstead $ shall adopt what is known as the Weak +nthropic Principle. That is $ shall take the values of the physical constants as given. -ut $ shall see what conclusions can !e drawn from the fact that life e'ists on this planet at this stage in the history of the universe. There was no car!on when the universe !egan in the -ig -ang a!out 45 !illion years ago. $t was so hot that all the matter would have !een in the form of particles called protons and neutrons. There would initially have !een e%ual num!ers of protons and neutrons. However as the universe e'panded it would have cooled. +!out a minute after the -ig -ang the temperature would have fallen to a!out a !illion degrees a!out a hundred times the temperature in the Sun. +t this temperature the neutrons will start to decay into more protons. $f this had !een all that happened all the matter in the universe would have ended up as the simplest element hydrogen whose nucleus consists of a single proton. However some of the neutrons collided with protons and stuck together to form the ne't simplest element helium whose nucleus consists of two protons and two neutrons. -ut no heavier elements like car!on or o'ygen would have !een formed in the early universe. $t is difficult to imagine that one could !uild a living system out of 0ust hydrogen and helium and anyway the early universe was still far too hot for atoms to com!ine into molecules. The universe would have continued to e'pand and cool. -ut some regions would have had slightly higher densities than others. The gravitational attraction of the e'tra matter in those regions would slow down their e'pansion and eventually stop it. $nstead they would collapse to form gala'ies and stars starting from a!out two !illion years after the -ig -ang. Some of the early stars would have !een more massive than our Sun. They would have !een hotter than the Sun and would have !urnt the original hydrogen and helium into heavier elements such as car!on o'ygen and iron. This could have taken only a few hundred million years. +fter that some of the stars would have e'ploded as supernovas and scattered the heavy elements !ack into space to form the raw material for later generations of stars. *ther stars are too far away for us to !e a!le to see directly if they have planets going round them. -ut certain stars called pulsars give off regular pulses of radio waves. We o!serve a slight variation in the rate of some pulsars and this is interpreted as indicating that they are !eing distur!ed !y having 6arth si7ed planets going round them. Planets going round pulsars are unlikely to have life !ecause any living !eings would have !een killed in the supernova e'plosion that led to the star !ecoming a pulsar. -ut the fact that several pulsars are o!served to have planets suggests that a reasona!le fraction of the hundred !illion stars in our gala'y may also have planets. The necessary planetary conditions for our form of life may therefore have e'isted from a!out four !illion years after the -ig -ang. *ur solar system was formed a!out four and a half !illion years ago or a!out ten !illion years after the -ig -ang from gas contaminated with the remains of earlier stars. The 6arth was formed largely out of the heavier elements including car!on and o'ygen. Somehow some of these atoms came to !e arranged in the form of molecules of 3"+. This has the famous dou!le heli' form discovered !y 2rick and Watson in a hut on the "ew /useum site in 2am!ridge. Linking the two chains in the heli' are pairs of nucleic acids. There are four types of nucleic acid adenine cytosine guanine and thiamine. $&m afraid my speech synthesiser is not very good at pronouncing their names. *!viously it was not designed for molecular !iologists. +n adenine on one chain is always matched with a thiamine on the other chain and a guanine with a cytosine. Thus the se%uence of nucleic acids on one chain defines a uni%ue complementary se%uence on the other chain. The two chains can then separate and each act as templates to !uild further chains. Thus 3"+ molecules can reproduce the genetic information coded in their se%uences of

nucleic acids. Sections of the se%uence can also !e used to make proteins and other chemicals which can carry out the instructions coded in the se%uence and assem!le the raw material for 3"+ to reproduce itself. We do not know how 3"+ molecules first appeared. The chances against a 3"+ molecule arising !y random fluctuations are very small. Some people have therefore suggested that life came to 6arth from elsewhere and that there are seeds of life floating round in the gala'y. However it seems unlikely that 3"+ could survive for long in the radiation in space. +nd even if it could it would not really help e'plain the origin of life !ecause the time availa!le since the formation of car!on is only 0ust over dou!le the age of the 6arth. *ne possi!ility is that the formation of something like 3"+ which could reproduce itself is e'tremely unlikely. However in a universe with a very large or infinite num!er of stars one would e'pect it to occur in a few stellar systems !ut they would !e very widely separated. The fact that life happened to occur on 6arth is not however surprising or unlikely. $t is 0ust an application of the Weak +nthropic Principle, if life had appeared instead on another planet we would !e asking why it had occurred there. $f the appearance of life on a given planet was very unlikely one might have e'pected it to take a long time. /ore precisely one might have e'pected life to appear 0ust in time for the su!se%uent evolution to intelligent !eings like us to have occurred !efore the cut off provided !y the life time of the Sun. This is a!out ten !illion years after which the Sun will swell up and engulf the 6arth. +n intelligent form of life might have mastered space travel and !e a!le to escape to another star. -ut otherwise life on 6arth would !e doomed. There is fossil evidence that there was some form of life on 6arth a!out three and a half !illion years ago. This may have !een only 588 million years after the 6arth !ecame sta!le and cool enough for life to develop. -ut life could have taken 9 !illion years to develop and still have left time to evolve to !eings like us who could ask a!out the origin of life. $f the pro!a!ility of life developing on a given planet is very small why did it happen on 6arth in a!out one 4:th of the time availa!le. The early appearance of life on 6arth suggests that there&s a good chance of the spontaneous generation of life in suita!le conditions. /ay!e there was some simpler form of organisation which !uilt up 3"+. *nce 3"+ appeared it would have !een so successful that it might have completely replaced the earlier forms. We don&t know what these earlier forms would have !een. *ne possi!ility is ;"+. This is like 3"+ !ut rather simpler and without the dou!le heli' structure. Short lengths of ;"+ could reproduce themselves like 3"+ and might eventually !uild up to 3"+. *ne can not make nucleic acids in the la!oratory from non)living material let alone ;"+. -ut given 588 million years and oceans covering most of the 6arth there might !e a reasona!le pro!a!ility of ;"+ !eing made !y chance. +s 3"+ reproduced itself there would have !een random errors. /any of these errors would have !een harmful and would have died out. Some would have !een neutral. That is they would not have affected the function of the gene. Such errors would contri!ute to a gradual genetic drift which seems to occur in all populations. +nd a few errors would have !een favoura!le to the survival of the species. These would have !een chosen !y 3arwinian natural selection. The process of !iological evolution was very slow at first. $t took two and a half !illion years to evolve from the earliest cells to multi)cell animals and another !illion years to evolve through fish and reptiles to mammals. -ut then evolution seemed to have speeded up. $t only took a!out a hundred million years to develop from the early mammals to us. The reason is fish contain most of the important human organs and mammals essentially all of them. +ll that was re%uired to evolve from early mammals like lemurs to humans was a !it of fine)tuning.

-ut with the human race evolution reached a critical stage compara!le in importance with the development of 3"+. This was the development of language and particularly written language. $t meant that information can !e passed on from generation to generation other than genetically through 3"+. There has !een no detecta!le change in human 3"+ !rought a!out !y !iological evolution in the ten thousand years of recorded history. -ut the amount of knowledge handed on from generation to generation has grown enormously. The 3"+ in human !eings contains a!out three !illion nucleic acids. However much of the information coded in this se%uence is redundant or is inactive. So the total amount of useful information in our genes is pro!a!ly something like a hundred million !its. *ne !it of information is the answer to a yes no %uestion. -y contrast a paper !ack novel might contain two million !its of information. So a human is e%uivalent to 58 /ills and -oon romances. + ma0or national li!rary can contain a!out five million !ooks or a!out ten trillion !its. So the amount of information handed down in !ooks is a hundred thousand times as much as in 3"+. 6ven more important is the fact that the information in !ooks can !e changed and updated much more rapidly. $t has taken us several million years to evolve from the apes. 3uring that time the useful information in our 3"+ has pro!a!ly changed !y only a few million !its. So the rate of !iological evolution in humans is a!out a !it a year. -y contrast there are a!out 58 888 new !ooks pu!lished in the 6nglish language each year containing of the order of a hundred !illion !its of information. *f course the great ma0ority of this information is gar!age and no use to any form of life. -ut even so the rate at which useful information can !e added is millions if not !illions higher than with 3"+. This has meant that we have entered a new phase of evolution. +t first evolution proceeded !y natural selection from random mutations. This 3arwinian phase lasted a!out three and a half !illion years and produced us !eings who developed language to e'change information. -ut in the last ten thousand years or so we have !een in what might !e called an e'ternal transmission phase. $n this the internal record of information handed down to succeeding generations in 3"+ has not changed significantly. -ut the e'ternal record in !ooks and other long lasting forms of storage has grown enormously. Some people would use the term evolution only for the internally transmitted genetic material and would o!0ect to it !eing applied to information handed down e'ternally. -ut $ think that is too narrow a view. We are more than 0ust our genes. We may !e no stronger or inherently more intelligent than our cave man ancestors. -ut what distinguishes us from them is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years and particularly over the last three hundred. $ think it is legitimate to take a !roader view and include e'ternally transmitted information as well as 3"+ in the evolution of the human race. The time scale for evolution in the e'ternal transmission period is the time scale for accumulation of information. This used to !e hundreds or even thousands of years. -ut now this time scale has shrunk to a!out 58 years or less. *n the other hand the !rains with which we process this information have evolved only on the 3arwinian time scale of hundreds of thousands of years. This is !eginning to cause pro!lems. $n the 4<th century there was said to !e a man who had read every !ook written. -ut nowadays if you read one !ook a day it would take you a!out 45 888 years to read through the !ooks in a national Li!rary. -y which time many more !ooks would have !een written. This has meant that no one person can !e the master of more than a small corner of human knowledge. People have to specialise in narrower and narrower fields. This is likely to !e a ma0or limitation in the future. We certainly can not continue for long with the e'ponential rate of growth of knowledge that we have had in the last three hundred years. +n even greater limitation and danger for future generations is that we still have the instincts and in particular the aggressive impulses that we had in cave man days. +ggression in the form of su!0ugating or killing other men and taking their women and food has had definite survival advantage up to the present

time. -ut now it could destroy the entire human race and much of the rest of life on 6arth. + nuclear war is still the most immediate danger !ut there are others such as the release of a genetically engineered virus. *r the green house effect !ecoming unsta!le. There is no time to wait for 3arwinian evolution to make us more intelligent and !etter natured. -ut we are now entering a new phase of what might !e called self designed evolution in which we will !e a!le to change and improve our 3"+. There is a pro0ect now on to map the entire se%uence of human 3"+. $t will cost a few !illion dollars !ut that is chicken feed for a pro0ect of this importance. *nce we have read the !ook of life we will start writing in corrections. +t first these changes will !e confined to the repair of genetic defects like cystic fi!rosis and muscular dystrophy. These are controlled !y single genes and so are fairly easy to identify and correct. *ther %ualities such as intelligence are pro!a!ly controlled !y a large num!er of genes. $t will !e much more difficult to find them and work out the relations !etween them. "evertheless $ am sure that during the ne't century people will discover how to modify !oth intelligence and instincts like aggression. Laws will !e passed against genetic engineering with humans. -ut some people won&t !e a!le to resist the temptation to improve human characteristics such as si7e of memory resistance to disease and length of life. *nce such super humans appear there are going to !e ma0or political pro!lems with the unimproved humans who won&t !e a!le to compete. Presuma!ly they will die out or !ecome unimportant. $nstead there will !e a race of self)designing !eings who are improving themselves at an ever)increasing rate. $f this race manages to redesign itself to reduce or eliminate the risk of self)destruction it will pro!a!ly spread out and colonise other planets and stars. However long distance space travel will !e difficult for chemically !ased life forms like 3"+. The natural lifetime for such !eings is short compared to the travel time. +ccording to the theory of relativity nothing can travel faster than light. So the round trip to the nearest star would take at least < years and to the centre of the gala'y a!out a hundred thousand years. $n science fiction they overcome this difficulty !y space warps or travel through e'tra dimensions. -ut $ don&t think these will ever !e possi!le no matter how intelligent life !ecomes. $n the theory of relativity if one can travel faster than light one can also travel !ack in time. This would lead to pro!lems with people going !ack and changing the past. *ne would also e'pect to have seen large num!ers of tourists from the future curious to look at our %uaint old)fashioned ways. $t might !e possi!le to use genetic engineering to make 3"+ !ased life survive indefinitely or at least for a hundred thousand years. -ut an easier way which is almost within our capa!ilities already would !e to send machines. These could !e designed to last long enough for interstellar travel. When they arrived at a new star they could land on a suita!le planet and mine material to produce more machines which could !e sent on to yet more stars. These machines would !e a new form of life !ased on mechanical and electronic components rather than macromolecules. They could eventually replace 3"+ !ased life 0ust as 3"+ may have replaced an earlier form of life. This mechanical life could also !e self)designing. Thus it seems that the e'ternal transmission period of evolution will have !een 0ust a very short interlude !etween the 3arwinian phase and a !iological or mechanical self design phase. This is shown on this ne't diagram which is not to scale !ecause there&s no way one can show a period of ten thousand years on the same scale as !illions of years. How long the self)design phase will last is open to %uestion. $t may !e unsta!le and life may destroy itself or get into a dead end. $f it does not it should !e a!le to survive the death of the Sun in a!out 5 !illion years !y moving to planets around other stars. /ost stars will have !urnt out in another 45 !illion years or so and the universe will !e approaching a state of complete disorder according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. -ut .reeman 3yson has shown that despite this life could adapt to the ever)decreasing supply of ordered energy and therefore could in principle continue forever.

What are the chances that we will encounter some alien form of life as we e'plore the gala'y. $f the argument a!out the time scale for the appearance of life on 6arth is correct there ought to !e many other stars whose planets have life on them. Some of these stellar systems could have formed 5 !illion years !efore the 6arth. So why is the gala'y not crawling with self designing mechanical or !iological life forms( Why hasn&t the 6arth !een visited and even colonised. $ discount suggestions that U.*&s contain !eings from outer space. $ think any visits !y aliens would !e much more o!vious and pro!a!ly also much more unpleasant. What is the e'planation of why we have not !een visited( *ne possi!ility is that the argument a!out the appearance of life on 6arth is wrong. /ay!e the pro!a!ility of life spontaneously appearing is so low that 6arth is the only planet in the gala'y or in the o!serva!le universe in which it happened. +nother possi!ility is that there was a reasona!le pro!a!ility of forming self reproducing systems like cells !ut that most of these forms of life did not evolve intelligence. We are used to thinking of intelligent life as an inevita!le conse%uence of evolution. -ut the +nthropic Principle should warn us to !e wary of such arguments. $t is more likely that evolution is a random process with intelligence as only one of a large num!er of possi!le outcomes. $t is not clear that intelligence has any long)term survival value. -acteria and other single cell organisms will live on if all other life on 6arth is wiped out !y our actions. There is support for the view that intelligence was an unlikely development for life on 6arth from the chronology of evolution. $t took a very long time two and a half !illion years to go from single cells to multi)cell !eings which are a necessary precursor to intelligence. This is a good fraction of the total time availa!le !efore the Sun !lows up. So it would !e consistent with the hypothesis that the pro!a!ility for life to develop intelligence is low. $n this case we might e'pect to find many other life forms in the gala'y !ut we are unlikely to find intelligent life. +nother way in which life could fail to develop to an intelligent stage would !e if an asteroid or comet were to collide with the planet. We have 0ust o!served the collision of a comet Schumacher)Levi with =upiter. $t produced a series of enormous fire!alls. $t is thought the collision of a rather smaller !ody with the 6arth a!out 98 million years ago was responsi!le for the e'tinction of the dinosaurs. + few small early mammals survived !ut anything as large as a human would have almost certainly !een wiped out. $t is difficult to say how often such collisions occur !ut a reasona!le guess might !e every twenty million years on average. $f this figure is correct it would mean that intelligent life on 6arth has developed only !ecause of the lucky chance that there have !een no ma0or collisions in the last 98 million years. *ther planets in the gala'y on which life has developed may not have had a long enough collision free period to evolve intelligent !eings. + third possi!ility is that there is a reasona!le pro!a!ility for life to form and to evolve to intelligent !eings in the e'ternal transmission phase. -ut at that point the system !ecomes unsta!le and the intelligent life destroys itself. This would !e a very pessimistic conclusion. $ very much hope it isn&t true. $ prefer a fourth possi!ility, there are other forms of intelligent life out there !ut that we have !een overlooked. There used to !e a pro0ect called S6T$ the search for e'tra)terrestrial intelligence. $t involved scanning the radio fre%uencies to see if we could pick up signals from alien civilisations. $ thought this pro0ect was worth supporting though it was cancelled due to a lack of funds. -ut we should have !een wary of answering !ack until we have develop a !it further. /eeting a more advanced civilisation at our present stage might !e a !it like the original inha!itants of +merica meeting 2olum!us. $ don&t think they were !etter off for it. That is all $ have to say. Thank you for listening