SLAAS lecture looks at aliens and life on earth
View(s):A seminar titled ‘An Encounter with Aliens from Stone Age to Spage Age’ was held at the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science (SLAAS) with keynote speaker Prof Chandra Wickremsinghe.
Dr Locana Gunaratna introduced Prof Wickremsinghe before he delivered the speech, which was followed by a Q & A session.
Prof Wickremsinghe started off with the concept of the milky way saying that it must have been a common sight for the stone age man that must have prompted the question how we as humans place ourselves in the milky way. It was found that the stone age man represented the milky way in works of art such as cave paintings.
Our distant ancestor also must have thought about aliens and must have asked the question ‘are we alone’ in the universe.
Prof Wickremsinghe touched on the first life forms on the planet which came in the form of crystals of Zychonium some 4.2 billion years ago. He mentioned that showers of asteroids probably hit the earth’s surface which carried the first life on earth.
Prof Wickremsinghe then inverted the billion years into a hundred years and stated that the single celled bacteria first came about 75 years, towering plants some 3 years ago and the dinosaurs some 6 years ago. After their extinction from the comet strike the homo erectus came some 2 weeks ago and the homo sapiens came some 18 hours ago.
The professor said there were two schools of thought on how life entered the world. (PW)
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