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Astronomy has always fascinated me ever since I was a small kid. It’s no big secret that I dreamed of becoming an astronaut. And I still hold to this day my opinion that dying in space is the coolest way for a human being to die. It’s quite literally out of this world! But I digress…

The Privileged Planet is a 1-hour documentary claiming that Earth is a special place in the cosmos. The film offers both scientific and philosophical reasons as basis for this idea. It’s basically an argument for Intelligent Design (ID) in the universe. The movie also postulates that Earth is privileged for scientific discovery given its prime location in the solar system and the Milky Way galaxy. Although it was released in 2004, the CG animation doesn’t feel quite as dated and the production looks like what you would often see in the History Channel or National Geographic.

Life here on Earth developed and continues to thrive because of several factors that are “just right”. Change one of these even just at a miniscule-scale and we won’t be here to tell this story. One factor, for example, is that Earth is in that habitable zone of the solar system. If Earth were any closer or farther from the Sun, complex life wouldn’t exist here. Another factor is if the solar system didn’t have Jupiter, life wouldn’t prosper here because of the imminent danger posed by asteroids and meteors.

I already knew many of the astronomical facts detailed in this movie but never really thought of using them as arguments for Intelligent Design. Although I’ve never really considered taking an active stand on ID or even opposing the Darwinian theory of evolution. Life hasn’t really offered that opportunity yet to make me choose one side and I honestly never really want to. I think that’s the beauty of science. We can all speculate about all this stuff as long as we can since most are theoretical. But again, I digress.

The fact that our Moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun and the Sun is 400 times farther than the Moon makes total solar eclipses possible here on Earth. (Of course, the Moon is getting farther away from the Earth but it would take billions of years for it to be significantly farther than where it is now.)

This relation of size and distance between the Moon and Sun has made it possible for scientists to study the atmosphere of the Sun or its corona which can only be observed during a solar eclipse. If the Moon was any bigger or smaller or if the Sun was nearer or farther from the Earth, scientists would not be able to observe and study the Sun’s corona and we would still be ignorant of what makes a star’s atmosphere. More importantly, eclipses of the Sun is one of the things which confirm Einstein’s theory of relativity, that light bends around objects of mass in space – a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.

The movie uses facts such as this to support the argument that the universe seems to have been “intelligently designed” for humans to study it. The movie goes on to many other factors such as humans being able to use the most important part of the light spectrum for observation (visible light), a galactic habitable zone and so much more.

Personally, I think the size and distance relation of the Sun and Moon is just too much of a coincidence for it not to have a purpose. And we humans are living right in the time when this relation between them still exists, not the time before or after! I think that’s nothing short of miraculous.

“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.”
~ Albert Einstein ~

I have to admit that I got a bit teary-eyed watching this and realizing how it all fits with my faith and everything I have come to understand about this world. At one point, I even looked away from the movie and gazed into the blue sky outside my window ruminating about how inspiring all this is. Corny but I really liked how this movie made me feel after seeing it.

However, I still hope humans will find complex extra-terrestrial life out there someday. The astronaut in me still wishes that we are not alone. I mean, I hope we don’t send generations of humans to a distance star system only to find extremophiles in its planets. I am hopeful there’d be civilizations too. Kind and compassionate ones I also hope.

I am particularly disappointed that this movie didn’t even give its own calculation of the probability (or improbability) of finding complex life given the several facts it has presented. Perhaps this was only an overview of the theory and one would also need to read the book this documentary was based on if they wanted more detail.

I understand that the conditions for complex life to thrive is very precise and almost impossible but here we are as proof that it is possible. And given the vastness of space and age of the universe, I am inclined to believe that Earth is not the only one in history that has met these requirements for life. But if advanced human civilizations in the future does prove me wrong and that Earth really is special (well maybe they could terraform other planets but those don’t count), then I don’t think you could find a stronger scientific evidence for an intelligent design.

The movie is not trying to offer conclusive evidence that we are special in the universe. That is not its goal. What it does offer is a good argument for believing that Earth, especially us, was created (or evolved, if you prefer that) for a purpose.