This week we move from the big bang to the Milky Way Galaxy as we continue our journey to Earth.  Spoiler alert: the fingerprint of intelligence is starting to become visible again!  God’s love for us shows through. “Size, age, type, and metallicity all conspire to drastically reduce the number of galaxies capable of harboring not only life but even terrestrial planets.  Our Milky Way is among the 2 percent most luminous and, hence, most metal-rich galaxies in the local universe, putting it way ahead on the scale of habitability.”  Gonzales and Richards, The Privileged Planet, 2004 pg 289-290 “Only in a spiral galaxy is a long history of life possible.  A spiral galaxy of the just-right size and the just-right structure can yield adequate heavy elements for life as well as a possible location where a planetary system can reside for billions of years without being exposed to deadly radiation and without gravitational disruptions from adjacent stars and molecular clouds.”  Ross, Improbable Planet, 2016 pg 31 “For a long history of life to be possible, life’s host galaxy must reside within a grouping of galaxies that includes no supergiant galaxies and remains distant from any dense cluster.  The group must contain a sufficiently high availability of dwarf galaxies to ensure that this one special spiral galaxy can accrete enough gas (from the dwarf galaxies) to sustain it’s spiral structure for many billions of years.  The number and density of dwarf galaxies must not be so high, however, as to generate any significant disturbance or warping of the host galaxy’s spiral arms.  Also the group must be sufficiently dispersed that large and medium-sized galaxies cause no disruption to the symmetry, size, or shape of the host galaxy.”  Improbable Planet, 2016, pg 30 

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