Tag: asteroid

2025-0103F-0707 Austin, TX

My then wife awoke a little after midnight. “I think it’s time”, she said. We timed the contractions and it was time to go to the hospital. I remember running a red light to get there. The rest is a blur until Anthony was born around 7am. I remember an old doctor coming in and checking on Anthony. He placed his thumbs on the soles of Anthony’s feet. Anthony’s toes curled around the doctor’s thumb. I exclaimed “Oh, that reflex must be from when we were monkeys and swung from trees.” The doctor looked at me confused and said something like “well, if you believe that fiction.” Since this story is burned in my memory, I was obviously shocked by a doctor not believing in evolution.

Yesterday, I saw a puppy sticking out its tongue. I was reminded of how very similar humans are to the other animal species. All life forms known to humans share a common genetic code origin which is highly conserved. This fact has always fascinated me since I learned it. In the winter of 2022, I started blogging on all the amino acids, beginning with A is for Alaline. An interesting thought experiment is to imagine that a probe finds life on asteroid, or even some frozen RNA/DNA fragments. How would our view of our origins change based on this discovery and analysis of the found RNA/DNA? What if it obviously matches our genetic code and appears from Earth? What if it obviously doesn’t? What if it doesn’t, but shows a common heritage?

In pondering these questions myself, I arrive at a creation story. Around 14 billion years ago our visible universe was reborn from whatever ancestor universe came before it. A few billion years later, our Milky Way galaxy was similarly reborn. Soon after, one of the solar systems in our galaxy began evolving life. The origin of this life occurred either in that solar system or another one that interfered with it. That solar system eventually died in a supernova or similar event. Hardy microbes survived in icy rocky asteroids that eventually found their way to our solar system as it formed. Initially in the Kuiper Belt, at least one of these asteroids crashed into Earth around 4 billion years ago. The rest is evolutionary history. Life is both very precious and very abundant in the multiverse. Creation is a recurring theme.

When I read my blog post from five years ago, I am reminded that I still struggle with replacing consumption with creation. I also failed in my 2020 intention of only checking my stock portfolio monthly. I still own AAPL, AMD, IBM, and WT. I sold SFM around $80 as it skyrocketed from $15 to $150 over the last few years. I also sold DS and NOK and bought EB, INTC, PYPL, and YELP.