THE “IMPOSSIBLE” MONOLITHS

 The one you see in the photo is probably the largest artificial monolith on Earth. It measures about 19.6 meters (64 feet) long and weighs 1,650 tons. It is located in Baalbek, Lebanon, and has existed at least since Roman times, if not much earlier (some estimates suggest 5,000 years, though there are no precise dates). The size and weight of this “monster” leave modern engineers speechless. They wonder how their “colleagues” from thousands of years ago could have built and transported something like this.

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What is even more surprising is that this monolith is not unique in the area. Nearby is what is called the “Temple of Jupiter.” The upper part of the temple is clearly Roman, no doubt about that. But the Roman temple rests on a “foundation” built with gigantic stones. The base consists of 27 enormous limestone blocks. Three of them, each weighing 1,000 tons, are known as the “Trilithon” and form a sort of “belt” surrounding all the blocks. This construction shows us that for the builders, carving and moving blocks of over 1,000 tons was not at all prohibitive. They clearly knew how to do it without major difficulties.

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The legends of Baalbek, allegorically speaking, tell us that even peoples of a distant past knew that “uncommon” things happened there. There are many legends about Baalbek: according to some ancient Arabic manuscripts, it belonged to Nimrod, the legendary Babylonian king mentioned in the Bible, who supposedly ordered its reconstruction after the flood, and it was entrusted to giants. Other ancient texts trace it back to Cain, who founded it 133 years after the creation of man, and here too giants are said to have populated the area. Cain built Baalbek to escape the wrath of Yahweh.

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It is likely that the ancient inhabitants of this region used allegorical figures such as Cain, the Giants, or Yahweh to describe things they could not understand. Even today, we struggle to comprehend how ordinary humans could have used 1,650-ton “monsters” as building “bricks” (and not as obelisks, as the Romans did, for example). Why did they need such massive stones? How did they move them so easily? How did they carve them with such precision?

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Many today believe that ancient civilizations existed in various parts of the Earth, including the Mediterranean basin, and were probably wiped out by climate change. The city of Nan Madol, the Great Pyramid, Gunung Padang are likely part of this list—and they leave us astounded. Do the colossal monoliths of Baalbek also belong to this list?

What seemingly impossible event has happened on other planets?

 We are possibly witnessing the birth of life on Titan even as we speak.

Ask any origin-of-life researcher why life evolved on Earth. They'll probably give you a list of reasons, with the Earth's location in the Goldilocks Zone around the Sun usually appearing at the top of that list.

The Goldilocks Zone offers the perfect conditions, especially in terms of temperature, for life to originate and thrive.

In the case of the Solar System, this region falls between the orbits of Venus and Mars. Venus, Earth, and Mars are the only planets that fall in this habitable zone.

It's another matter that Venus and Mars don't support life because of other reasons that have little to do with their location.

Any planet farther than Mars and closer than Venus cannot support life.

That's until Titan, Saturn's moon, decided that it's not going to be gaslit by bipedal primates on a far-off rock!

Image Credits: How Does The Surface Of Moon 'Titan' Looks Like? » Space Exploration

The Prebiotic Chemistry of Titan

Titan's atmosphere is mainly composed of nitrogen (~98%) with smaller amounts of methane (~1.4%) and trace gases like hydrogen, argon, and carbon monoxide.

However, solar radiation and cosmic rays are breaking methane into smaller molecules, which are further reacting with each other to form a variety of other complex compounds like ethane, benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, etc.

These complex compounds are further undergoing reactions to form even more complex compounds like amino acids, which you may know as building blocks of proteins!

Mind you, all of this is happening at temperatures in the vicinity of -179°C or -290°F.

Water freezes at 0°C, and the temperature on Titan is frigid -179°C. Yet, it has lakes, rivers, and even seas all over it. But, they're all composed of liquid methane and ethane. Not water!

And it's supporting this complex organic chemistry that's the precursor to life.

To be clear, Titan is far from a crucible for life yet. But scientists believe that its chemistry today is remarkably similar to that of early Earth before life originated here.

Even if (and that's a big IF) life originates on Titan, it will probably take many millions of years, if not billions of years, for it to happen.

However, the fact that we are witnessing this prebiotic chemistry in the works so far away from the Goldilocks Zone is freaking crazy!

That opens up the question: how many other planets and moons are out there with conditions to support life - and perhaps even teeming with life - that we've ignored only because we believe their conditions do not support liquid water!

More importantly, the recent discovery of a likely habitable period in Mars's history and Titan's potential to support the origin of life present an exciting possibility. That's at least 2 opportunities besides Earth for life to originate in the Solar System alone.

The odds alone are astronomically small.

Even without the discovery of life in both cases, it radically increases the prevalence of opportunities (conducive conditions) for the origin of life beyond the Solar System. I mean, if liquid water is not so essential for life, I wonder if anything else is.