By Chance

 Evolution, really?       Acknowledgements: UCB Word For Today   & The Web Sept 2022.

By Chance

By chance the universe has no centre and is constantly expanding every second.

By chance the sun warms our planet, and with the Moon, creates the tides. The Moon orbits the Earth and in turn, the Earth orbits the Sun.

By chance if the earth was 10% larger or 10% smaller, life as we know it wouldn’t be possible. Or that we’re just the right distance from the sun so we receive the right amount of heat and light If we were any farther away, we’d freeze, and if we were closer, we'd fry. None of the other planets are tilted like ours at 23 degrees. This angle allows the sun’s rays to touch every part of the earth’s surface over the course of a year, as the earth circles the sun. If there was no tilt to the axis, the poles would accumulate enormous masses of ice, and the centre of the earth would become so hot we couldn’t stand it.

By chance without the moon, it would be impossible for us to live on this planet. And if anyone ever succeeded in deflecting the moon from its orbit, all life would cease. It acts like a cleaner to our ocean's shores. Without the tides created by the moon, our harbours and shores would become one big smelly pool and it would be impossible to live anywhere near them. Because of the tides, continuous waves break upon the shores of the ocean, aerating the waters of the planet and providing oxygen for plankton, the very foundation of our food chain. Without plankton there would be no oxygen, and all life would end. And by chance the moon is the right size and placed at the right distance from the earth to create the exact atmosphere we need. We live within a great ocean of air - 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen. These elements are continually mixed by the tidal effect of the moon upon the atmosphere. This has the same effect it has upon the seas and always provides the same proportion of oxygen. Though we keep dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, by chance it’s absorbed into the ocean and we’re able to continue to live. If the atmosphere wasn’t as thick as it is, we’d be crushed by billions of pieces of cosmic debris and meteorites that fall continually upon our planet.

By chance nitrogen is extremely inert - if it wasn’t we’d all be poisoned by different forms of nitrous combinations. However, because of its inertness, it’s impossible for us to get nitrogen to combine naturally with other things. But it’s definitely needed for plants in the ground, so the solution is lightning! By chance a hundred thousand lightning bolts strike our planet daily, creating a hundred million tons of usable nitrogen plant food in the soil every year. Forty miles up, there’s a thin layer of ozone. If compressed it would be only a quarter of an inch thick, yet without it life wouldn’t be sustainable. Without ozone we’d be burned, blinded, or boiled. The ultraviolet rays come in two forms: longer rays, which are deadly and are screened out, and shorter rays, which are necessary for life on earth and are administered through the ozone layer. By chance the deadliest of these rays are allowed through the ozone layer in a very limited amount, just enough to kill the green algae which otherwise could grow to smother the lakes, rivers, and oceans of the world.

By chance to date nowhere else in the universe do we find water in any abundance, except here on earth. Water, dissolves almost everything upon this earth except those things that are life-sustaining. This amazing liquid we take for granted exists as ice, breaks up rocks, and produces soil. As snow, it stores up water in the valleys. As rain, it waters and cleanses the earth. As vapour, it provides moisture for much of the arable land on earth. It exists as cloud cover in just the right amount. If it had clouds like Venus, the earth couldn’t support life. But we have exactly 50% of the surface of the earth covered by clouds at any one time, allowing just the right amount of sunlight to filter through. As steam, for centuries water has run some of the most powerful machinery we have. Other than bismuth, it’s the only liquid heavier at four degrees Celsius than it is at freezing. If this were not so, life as we know it could not exist on this planet. Therefore, when it’s frozen it’s lighter and it rises. If this wasn’t the case, our lakes and rivers would freeze from the bottom up and kill all the fish; the algae would be destroyed, oxygen supply would cease, and mankind would die.

Again by chance at 2 to 3 weeks after fertilisation, a baby’s brain is the first organ to appear. By the time a fetus is 14 weeks old, they already have all of their hair follicles formed. What’s even more amazing is that a baby’s hair grows and sheds for at least two cycles while still in the mother’s uterus. The amniotic fluid absorbs the shed hair. By the 4th month the abilities of the baby grow quickly. The baby is by then capable of sucking thumb and playing with umbilical cord. It is only during the fifth month that the baby can cover its ears with its hands in presence of a strong external sound stimuli. By 6th month the unborn baby is a complete human being.

By chance there is more we don’t know about the human brain than we currently know. There are around 75 to 100 billion neurons present in the brain and the length of each blood vessels present in the brain are almost 100000 miles.

By chance your heart will beat about 115,000 times and pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood every day. An electrical system controls the rhythm of your heart. It’s called the cardiac conduction system. and will continue to beat if separated from your body.

By chance for a century fingerprints have been the basis of identification, billions have been analysed however no two duplicate patterns have been recorded. Your fingerprints were formed before you were born. Their patterns even grow with you as your hands and fingers continue to grow. But identical twins don’t have identical fingerprints.

By chance the human body manufactures 17 million red blood cells per second. If stress precipitates a need the body can produce up to 7 times that amount. (That’s up to 119 million red blood cells per second.)

A red blood cell is around 7 microns in size. (A micron is one millionth of a meter). It only takes 20 to 60 seconds for a drop of blood to travel from the heart, through your body, and back to the heart again.

Again by chance it would take you 50 years to type the entire human genome if you typed at a speed of 60 words-per-minute and worked 8 hours a day, every day.

By chance every person has, on average, 100 trillion bacteria on our skin and inside our body? That is ten times more bacteria than the total number of cells in your body. We could say that we are actually 90% bacteria and only 10% human.

By chance our eyes focus on 50 different objects every second and can distinguish approximately 10 million different colours.

By chance your tongue is actually a group of muscles that work without the support of your skeleton, no other muscle in the human body can do this! That makes them incredibly flexible, which allows you to form sounds, whistle, move food around your mouth, swallow, and you can even use it to clean your teeth after eating. And as it happens human teeth are just as strong as shark teeth.

By chance scientists estimate that the nose can recognise a trillion different scents!

By chance humans are the only species known to blush.

So, this is what we know and much more, all by pure evolutionary, mathematical scientific chance...or is it?