Name: 宇宙級古老生命！ (Ancient Life as Old as the Universe)
Uploaded: 2026-01-21T17:22:04.000Z
Duration: 9 min 35 s

Life has existed on one planet for about 4 billion years, as far as we know.

據我們所知，地球上的生命大約存在了 40 億年。

情態助動詞 (推斷語氣)

But it might have started right after the Big Bang, when the universe was much stranger and more fantastic than today.

但生命可能在宇宙剛誕生、比現在更奇特、更奇幻的 Big Bang 後不久就開始了。

關係子句

A universe that might have allowed life to develop absolutely anywhere.

那樣的宇宙，或許讓生命能在任何地方發展。

The cosmos might be full of the seeds of life.

Sleeping in a dead desert, waiting for a few drops of rain to explosively bloom and grow.

沉睡在死寂的沙漠裡，等待幾滴雨水就能爆發式地綻放成長。

無論是微小的還是不那麼微小的，外星生命都有可能。

In this video, we're going to put together two highly speculative, yet scientifically grounded possibilities.

在這支影片裡，我們要結合兩個高度推測性、但有科學根據的可能性。

Check out the scientific papers in our sources to properly explain it.

記得去看看我們來源裡的科學論文，好好解釋一下。

Let's first look at the paradox of life on Earth.

我們先來看看地球生命的悖論。

For its first few hundred million years, Earth was a magma hell, constantly bombarded by asteroids.

地球最初幾億年，就像個巖漿地獄，不斷被小行星轟炸。

But basically, the second things calmed down and the first oceans formed, life just appeared, and

但基本上，情況一穩定、第一個海洋形成後，生命就出現了，

zillions of microbes settled every nook and cranny they found.

然後數不清的微生物就佔據了牠們找到的每一個角落。

Life on Earth seems to be almost as old as the planet itself, as if it was waiting around for an opportunity.

地球上的生命似乎跟這顆行星一樣古老，好像一直在等待機會。

But life didn't only appear extremely quickly in that tiny time window, it also crossed a huge gap.

但生命不僅在那個極小的時間窗口裡出現得非常快，還跨越了一個巨大的鴻溝。

To qualify as living things, even microbes need to eat, poop, grow, and multiply.

要被歸類為生物，即使是微生物也需要吃、排洩、生長和繁殖。

為了做到這點，牠們需要一個基因組。

The biological instruction manual that sets the inner workings of an organism.

這是一本生物學的說明手冊，決定了生物體的內部運作。

How dead things with no genome become living things with genomes is one of the biggest riddles of science.

死的東西沒有基因組，卻變成了有基因組的生物，這也是科學上最大的謎團之一。

The problem is that to have a functioning genome, you need proteins, and

問題是，要有一個能運作的基因組，你需要蛋白質，而

to make those proteins, you need a functioning genome.

要製造那些蛋白質，你需要一個能運作的基因組。

Both proteins and genomes are super long molecules made of pretty complex blocks that are extremely difficult to assemble by chance.

蛋白質和基因組都是由非常複雜的積木組成的超長分子，單憑機率很難組裝起來。

It's a chicken egg paradox with several chickens and eggs.

這就像一個雞生蛋、蛋生雞的悖論，而且還有好幾隻雞和好幾個蛋。

Once you have a finished cell, the whole system works efficiently.

一旦你有了完整的細胞，整個系統就能有效運作。

But starting from simple dead stuff and reaching that level of sophistication by pure chance should require an amazing amount of time for trial and error.

但要從簡單的無生命物質開始，單憑機率達到那樣的複雜程度，應該需要驚人的時間來試錯。

So how did the first living things manage to cross that gap in just a few hundred million years?

那麼，最初的生命體是如何在短短幾億年內跨越這個鴻溝的呢？

Most theories about the origin of life try to explain that gap by theorizing how some primitive soup of prebiotic molecules could have efficiently produced the first self replicating entities.

大多數關於生命起源的理論，都試圖解釋這個鴻溝，假設某些原始的有機分子湯能夠有效地產生第一個能夠自我複製的實體。

But we still don't know how exactly this would have worked.

但我們仍然不知道這究竟是如何實現的。

Think of genomes as a book telling the history of life.

把基因組想像成一本記錄生命史的書。

As time passed and life evolved, more characters were introduced.

隨著時間過去、生命演化，出現了更多字元。

Amoeba, fish, amphibians, dinosaurs, and mammals.

阿米巴原蟲、魚類、兩棲動物、恐龍和哺乳動物。

Over billions of years, the story of life got more and more complex.

數十億年來，生命的演化故事越來越複雜。

A genome can be viewed as a Long string of letters with biological instructions.

基因組可以看成一長串帶有生物指令的字母。

Today, functional genomes Seem to have been increasing in size At a fairly constant rate.

如今，功能性基因組似乎以相當穩定的速率持續增加。

The functional genome of fish is more than twice that of worms.

魚類的功能性基因組比蠕蟲大兩倍以上。

Our functional genome is about twice bigger than that of fish, and so on.

我們人類的功能性基因組大約是魚類的兩倍，以此類推。

It is a bit more complicated, but for now, let's run with this.

這稍微有點複雜，但目前我們先這樣理解。

When we put all these clues together, it seems that genomes have been doubling in size, on average, every 350 million years or so, as if evolution had been following an exponential inner clock.

當我們把這些線索拼湊起來，似乎基因組的規模平均每大約三億五千萬年就翻倍一次，好像演化遵循著一個指數級的內在時鐘。

The very first microbes that emerged on earth, Even if they look simple, already seem to have had pretty long and complex genomes.

最早出現在地球上的微生物，即使看起來很簡單，似乎也已經擁有相當長且複雜的基因組了。

But how could life have achieved that level of complexity in such a short time?

但生命是如何在這麼短的時間內達到那樣的複雜程度呢？

There may be an interesting way to solve this riddle.

或許有個有趣的方法可以解開這個謎團。

We just take our exponential clock and extrapolate it back in time to the simplest conceivable life form, Something equivalent to a being with a genome containing just a few letters.

我們就拿這個指數時鐘，把它往回推算到最簡單可想像的生命形式，相當於一個基因組只有幾個字母的生物。

But if we do that, we end up 10 billion years in the past, More than twice the age of Earth.

但如果我們這麼做，就會回到十億年前，這比地球的年齡還要大兩倍多。

Which means if life actually evolved like this, it didn't start here, but somewhere out there in space.

這意味著，如果生命真的像這樣演化，它並不是從這裡開始的，而是從外太空的某個地方開始的。

This would explain why life started to thrive so quickly on our young planet.

這就能解釋為什麼生命在我們年輕的星球上，能這麼快就蓬勃發展。

If it was already present in space like a seed.

如果生命就像種子一樣，早已存在於宇宙中。

It just needed water and warm temperatures to wake up and go on evolving.

它只需要水和溫暖的溫度就能甦醒，並持續演化。

And it would also explain the high degree of sophistication of the first life forms on earth.

這也能解釋地球上早期生命形式的高度複雜性。

They could have been complex already, because they might have been evolving for billions of years Somewhere else in the universe.

牠們可能已經很複雜了，因為牠們可能已經在宇宙的其他地方演化了數十億年。

Actually, life could have started shortly after the universe itself was born.

事實上，生命可能在宇宙誕生後不久就開始了。

At its most basic level, life needs two the right chemical elements to form complex molecules and a liquid medium like water, in which those molecules can move and interact.

最基本來說，生命需要兩種條件：能形成複雜分子的適當化學元素，以及一種液體介質，像是水，讓這些分子能在其中移動和互動。

The liquid medium needs to stay warm enough to remain, well, liquid.

這種液體介質需要保持足夠的溫暖，才能維持，嗯，液態。

So when we search for life in space, we focus on Earth, like planets at just the right distance from their star, Warm enough to sustain liquid water.

所以當我們在太空中尋找生命時，我們會關注像地球這樣的行星，它們距離恆星的距離剛剛好，溫暖到足以維持液態水。

But there was actually a time when almost all of the universe Might have been habitable.

但其實曾經有一段時間，幾乎整個宇宙都可能是適合居住的。

Right after the big Bang, the universe was extremely hot.

Big Bang 之後不久，宇宙非常熾熱。

但隨著宇宙膨脹，它也冷卻下來。

And between about 10 and 17 million years after the big bang, when the universe was a thousand times younger than today, it was between 100 degrees Celsius and 0 degrees Celsius, the temperature at which water is liquid.

在大約 Big Bang 後 1000 萬到 1700 萬年間，也就是宇宙比現在年輕一千倍的時候，它的溫度介於攝氏 100 度到 0 度之間，這是水呈現液態的溫度。

So for this window of time, more than 13.7 billion years ago, the whole universe Absolutely.

所以在那段時間裡，也就是 137 億多年前，整個宇宙。

Every inch of it had the right temperature to support life.

每一寸地方都有適合生命存在的溫度。

Of course, the right temperature alone is not enough for life.

當然，光有適當的溫度對生命來說是不夠的。

We also need chemical elements like carbon and oxygen, which are forged in the cores of stars.

我們也需要碳和氧等化學元素，這些元素是在恆星的核心中鍛造出來的。

But were there stars in super early cosmic times?

但在宇宙非常早期的時候有恆星嗎？

In regions of the universe where matter was especially dense, such stars would have been very massive and gone supernova in just 3 million years, seeding the baby universe with the chemical elements needed to form dust, asteroids, planets, and

在宇宙中物質特別密集的區域，這樣的恆星會非常巨大，並在短短 300 萬年內就超新星爆發，為初生的宇宙播下形成塵埃、小行星、行星以及

Maybe the first ancestors of life were more exotic and didn't even need water, but

也許生命的最初祖先更加奇特，甚至不需要水，而是

thrived in substances like ammonia or ethane that can stay liquid at temperatures far below 0 degrees Celsius.

在氨或乙烷等遠低於攝氏零度的溫度下仍能保持液態的物質中茁壯成長。

They could have been sustained by the lingering warmth of the Big Bang, or for tens of millions of years longer, well into a time when we know for sure there were stars and all the chemical elements.

牠們可以依靠 Big Bang 的餘溫，或是再持續數千萬年，直到我們確定有恆星和所有化學元素出現的時候。

The real magic of this idea is that while the universe today is extremely deadly and hostile, back then the conditions for life might have been basically everywhere.

這個想法的真正神奇之處在於，雖然今天的宇宙極度致命且充滿敵意，但那時候生命的條件可能基本上無處不在。

For a period that may have lasted several dozen million years, primordial life might have been able to emerge on any rock, even between the stars, sowing the universe with the seeds of what billions of years later would become bacteria, trilobites, dinosaurs, and

在一段可能持續數千萬年的時期裡，原始生命可能可以在任何一顆岩石上，甚至在恆星之間出現，為數十億年後演變成細菌、三葉蟲、恐龍以及

At some point, the universe cooled down below the right temperature for life to thrive.

在某個時刻，宇宙冷卻到適合生命蓬勃發展的溫度。

But some of those ancestral life forms may have continued to exist in the internal warmth of the first planets, frozen in asteroids or hibernating in cosmic dust.

但其中一些早期生命形式可能繼續存在於第一批行星的內部暖流中，被凍結在小行星裡，或是在宇宙塵埃中冬眠。

Tiny seeds roaming the cosmos, waiting for new hospitable places to continue evolving.

在宇宙中遊蕩的微小種子，等待著新的宜居之地繼續演化。

If they did, life now might be everywhere in the universe.

如果真是如此，現在的生命可能遍佈宇宙。

這一切都構成了一個很棒的故事。

And while both the habitability of the baby universe and our exponential clock of life are reasonable ideas, they're still speculative.

雖然嬰兒宇宙的宜居性和我們指數級的生命演化時間線都是合理的想法，但它們仍然是推測。

One more possibility among many others trying to explain our existence today.

眾多試圖解釋我們今日存在的可能性之一。

But if life came to Earth from outer space, then it should have seeded other places in the solar system too.

但如果生命來自外太空來到地球，那它應該也播下了種子在太陽系的其他地方。

Maybe there are fossils in dry riverbeds on Mars.

或許火星的乾涸河床裡有化石。

Maybe we'll soon find life in the warm underground oceans of Enceladus or Europa.

或許我們很快就會在恩賽拉達斯或歐羅巴的溫暖地下海洋裡發現生命。

土衛六有由乙烷和甲烷組成的海洋、河流和

lakes of ethane and methane as warm as the universe when it was 90 million years old.

湖泊，溫度跟宇宙誕生後 9000 萬年的時候一樣溫暖。

So finding exotic life on Titan would support the idea that life could have originated in the weird baby universe.

所以，如果在土衛六發現奇特的生命，將會支持生命可能起源於奇特的嬰兒宇宙的說法。

So far, when we look out into the cosmos, we don't see anyone like us.

到目前為止，當我們望向宇宙時，我們並沒有看到像我們一樣的生命。

But maybe that's because life needed 10 billion years or more to reach the level of complexity that allows for a technological species Maybe there are millions of worlds filled with microbes.

但也許是因為生命需要 100 億年或更長的時間才能達到能發展出科技物種的複雜程度，也許宇宙中有數百萬個世界充滿了微生物。

And maybe even others like us that just recently gained consciousness.

也許還有其他跟我們一樣，最近才獲得意識的生命。