Life on Another Earth...

I was in the breakroom at work eating my lunch and reading a book* when I took a break from reading to talk to a co-worker about the news that scientists are on the verge of finding another earth-like planet in our galaxy. I brought it up to see what his opinion on the matter was. After all, it was just a few days ago that we had a pretty lengthy (and enlightening) conversation about the Big Bang Theory.**

Basically my co-worker told me that he doesn't really care whether someone believes in creationism or evolution. But if the universe was created, then that would mean that all other earth-like planets (and he, like me, believes there are many) would all consist of the same carbon-based life forms (aka humans). But if the earth evolved, then that means that each earth-like planet could consist of life forms different from our own. His example was that perhaps on another earth-like planet, dolphins may have evolved into superior and intelligent beings and they created an entire world, like ours, under water.

To me, that sounds like a great plot line for a science fiction novel. How could dolphins (or any other life form) ever be more intelligent than the human race? I don't believe in aliens or any other crazy creature like that, but I do believe that there is life on other planets. I guess that means I believe in the Creation and that life forms on other planets are like me.

What do you say? Do we all have a twin out there somewhere or are our nearest "earthly" neighbors a more intelligent form of dolphin?

This reminds me of Planet of the Apes, and that movie really freaked me out.




* As my book continued to lay open while we were talking, another co-worker looked at the page the book was open to and pointed to it. I looked down and saw that the title of the new chapter read: "WHERE WE CAME FROM" .

** The other day I was reading a newspaper and it happened to have a scientific quiz I could take. I took it and got every question correct except for the last one. The question was true/false and asked "The Universe was created by a big explosion". Of course I said false, but the paper said the answer was true. That got me on a tangent about how the Big Bang Theory has never been proven, which is why it's called the Big Bang Theory. Therefore, the answer of 'true' is incorrect and the question should not have been on the quiz. My co-worker and I discussed it, at length, and decided that since the question is still being debated it shouldn't be on the quiz.