Cosmic consciousness

Coincidence that caused consciousness

Before I start I like to make it clear to my readers that coincidence are the events that occurred after the big bang. One of the most important and outstanding coincidences in the history of universe, and consciousness here is nothing but the life that appeared in this vast cosmos. So “coincidences that caused consciousness”, simply the events that are responsible making earth a habitat for consciousness. Since the down, whenever cosmologists looked up high in the sky, dazzled by its vastness and always thinking, size, stuff, physical laws and etc. always revolving around the oddness of laws of nature that make universe so suitable as home for life. In this series some of those cosmic coincidences are discussed.

The investigation of these coincidences is sometimes referred as ‘Anthropic Cosmology’, as our existence depends on the existence of these coincidences.  

 The Carbon Coincidence

With the development of understanding of the universe in the second half of twentieth century many of the mysteries of the cosmos were unveiled and scientists,cosmologists and researchers expanded their domain to solve other issues of cosmos, one of them was emergence of life  coincidences.

 There is abundant evidence regarding the universe we see around as began in a hot, dense fireball popularly known as the Big Bang – about 13.7 billion years ago. Since then the universe is expanding and cooling, but within the expanding universe clouds of gas has been pulled together by the gravity to form stars and galaxies. 

We all are made of atoms, which are themselves composed of protons and neutrons and electrons (sometimes referred as baryonic matter).  By comparing the observation of radiation left over from the big bang or the cosmic background radiation and theoretical calculation we now know that the baryonic matter that emerged from big bang was almost entirely in the form of two simplest elements, i.e. Hydrogen & Helium.  About 75 per cent was Hydrogen (one electron and one proton) and 25 per cent was Helium (two protons, two neutrons in the nucleus and two electrons). All this is confirmed by spectroscopic analysis of the light from the oldest stars, born when the universe was young.

Stars are the manufacturing unit of the universe, where all the other elements have been made inside them, by the process of nuclear fusion and ten get scattered in the space when stars die. Hence these materials acts as raw materials in producing other stars and planets, but this Is a slow process.  Even today also those heavy elements, except hydrogen and helium make up less than 2 per cent of the total baryonic matter of the Universe, and most amazing this is the only fraction of elements which allowed  the existence of planets and people.  Four of the chemical elements are important for life: Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen and Nitrogen. All these elements were not present at the time of big bang, rather manufactured inside the stars by combining Helium nuclei with one another, step by step, making bigger and bigger nuclei, for example nucleus of carbon containing 6 protons and 6 neutrons, which is achieved when 3 Helium nuclei stuck together, similarly oxygen nuclei has 8 protons and 8 neutrons, for that 4 Helium nuclei must stuck together or 1 Helium nucleus and 1 Carbon nucleus making an Oxygen. It’s clear that on moving towards higher elements we need the help of Helium and Carbon, but where does this Carbon came from?? You might be thinking, Carbon formed by adding Helium to the nuclei of next element down the ladder making beryllium (composed of 4 protons and 4 neutrons) and then further other elements. But the nucleus of beryllium – formed by sticking two Helium nuclei together is extremely unstable and fall apart as soon as it is formed.  Now if two nuclei happen two bump into one another inside a star and stick, there might be third Helium nucleus to collide with beryllium and in early 1950’s it was believed that it would smash the unstable nucleus apart rather than allowing to all three nuclei stuck together to form a carbon nucleus, then how carbon came into existence, and if there is no carbon, there would be no oxygen and no other heavy elements, there would be no life, specially no carbon-based like ourselves. This puzzle led scientists to think of the way to understand the formation of Carbon atom.  

Fred Hoyle

In 1954, Fred Hoyle came up with a possible route from Helium to Carbon, he reasoned that because we exist there must be a way round this nuclear fusion bottleneck, it depend on the possibility that a carbon nucleus could exist in excited state, with an energy that resonates with the energy of a beryllium nucleus plus a Helium nucleus. There was no other reason to except this resonance on any other basis except for the fact that we exist. Carbon exists in our universe so the nucleus must resonate in the right way.

This resonance can be compare a bit with the way different notes can be played on a single guitar string, the basic note of the string produces the lowest node, the fundamental but it is also possible to play harmonics on the same string. Just as a single guitar string cannot play every possible note, only harmonics of its fundamental, in the same way a nucleus cannot exist with any amount of energy. But it can absorb energy and become excited for a short time before coming to its ground level. It will work only if there is just the right amount of energy coming in to make the jump to one of the possible excited state. Take the same example of guitar, if the guitar is left leaning against an amplifier and if someone plays a loud note through the amplifier, if the wavelength of the note is the right one or more of the guitar strings will vibrate in sympathy with that note – it will resonate.

By 1954 it was knew that the energy of a combination of a beryllium and a helium nucleus is 7.3667 MeV. Hoyle said that there must be an excited energy level of the carbon that is just a little bit higher than this so that the kinetic energy of the upcoming Helium would lift the total energy making resonance possible. If it did so instead of incoming helium nucleus blasting the unstable beryllium nucleus apart it would form an excited carbon nucleus, which would the radiate extra energy in the usual way and settle down in the usual way. 

This explanation of excited state of carbon and formation of Carbon on the basis of that we exist was ludicrous and many scientists at that laughed at it, but when proper experiments on carbon nuclei were carried out in laboratories, it was found that there is an excited energy level at right amount 7.6549 MeV above the combined Helium/beryllium energy for resonance to work. With this stable carbon, Oxygen can be easily formed by the combination of carbon/helium inside the stars.

This is the remarkable and outstanding coincidence, if the excited energy of Carbon were just a little bit lower then there would be no carbon in the universe. If the Oxygen energy level were just a little higher, there would be no carbon in the universe because it would all have been converted into Oxygen. Either way , Carbon-based life forms like ourselves would never exist.    

This is one of the remarkable coincidence with the fine tuning of the excited energy which allowed the life supporting elements to exist and life to emerge in this universe.

Monis Khan