Распространенность жизни и уникальность разума? - Марк Исаакович Мосевицкий

Мосевицкий. Распространенность жизни и уникальность разума? – Гатчина Ленинградской обл.: Издательство ПИЯФ РАН, 2008. – 236 с.

Мосевицкий Марк Исаакович – главный научный сотрудник Отделения молекулярной и радиационной биофизики Петербургского института ядерной физики им. Б.П. Константинова РАН, доктор биологических наук, профессор. В настоящее время основная область научных интересов – молекулярные механизмы обучения и памяти.

M.I. Mosevitsky. Wide spreading of life and uniqueness of mind?

Publishing division of Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences.

Traces of cellular forms of life were found in the earliest sediments (3.85 billion years of age). Therefore, life on the Earth arose soon after the environment became compatible with its existence. It means that precellular evolution was performed in a very short time (10–50 million years). Another possibility – accomplishment of precellular evolution elsewhere, and arrival of viable cell to ready for its multiplication Earth (panspermia). In any case, the Earth’s experience shows that the probability of life appearance on other planets of our system and in other worlds was rather high. However, the paleontological chronicles evidence numerous crisises (extinctions), which caused tight bends of evolution process. The main causes of the crisises were collisions with asteroids (impacts), global glaciations, long-term lava outflows, changes of gas balance in the oceans and atmosphere. Mutations and horizontal genetic exchanges also exert countless influences on the evolution. Due to superposition of different accidental events all evolution processes are uncial. After almost 4 billion years of life development on the Earth, the evolution process produced a single branch of hominins (the bipedal successors of chimpanzee) leading to the intellectual beings. After many crisis situations, only one sprout representing the contemporary mankind remains on this branch. The apparent absence of any signs of artificial signals in the available for contacts outer space confirms an impression that evolution version resulting in intellectual civilization is highly unlikely. Knowledge of character of the crisises that occurred on the Earth in past is necessary for prevention of such events or mitigation of their consequences in future. The main material of this book is available to all interested readers. The author supposed also to make the book useful for specialists. For this purpose, many recent papers published in scientific journals are cited.