During medieval times, Christian theologians accepted the Ptolemaic earth-centered Greek view of the universe as an absolute universal truth. They believed that the earth, life in general and human life in particular should be the center of God’s world. Thus they also taught that the incarnation of God through the body of Jesus must be an absolutely unique event the likes of which could not happen elsewhere.

Even today Jose Funes, the director of the Vatican’s astronomical observatory, who has a degree in theology and a doctorate in astronomy, said that, “What is clear is that while God may have created aliens and planets similar to Earth, there can be no second Jesus.” “The discovery of intelligent life does not mean there’s another Jesus,” he insisted because “the incarnation of the son of God is a unique event in the history of humanity; of the Universe.”

But Islam teaches that Allah, the one and only God of the whole universe, has not only sent thousands of prophets to all the nations and peoples of mankind on earth, but has also sent prophets to the jinn, who are non-human species everywhere else: “O company of jinn and mankind, if you are able to pass beyond the regions of the heavens and the earth, then pass. You will not pass except by authority (from Allah).” (Qur’an 55:33)

Life on Planet Earth had to begin somewhere, and scientists think that “somewhere” is LUCA—or the Last Universal Common Ancestor. True to its name, this prokaryote-like organism represents the ancestor of every living thing, from the tiniest of bacteria to the grandest of blue whales.

While the Cambrian Explosion kickstarted complex life in a major way some 530 million years, the true timeline of life on Planet Earth is much longer. For years, scientists have estimated that LUCA likely arrived on the scene some 4 billion years, which is only 600 million years after the planet’s formation.

But now a study from an international team of scientists pushes that timeline back even further to some 4.2 billion years ago, while also discovering some fascinating details about what life for LUCA might’ve been like. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution in 2024.

LUCA on Planet Earth started 4.2 billion years ago but LUCA on other planets started billions of years earlier: ”Say, ˹O Prophet,˺........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)