The first Man on Earth, the first car on Ponte do Freixo, the nameless object

Who was the first Man to be born on Earth? And the first car to cross Ponte do Freixo, in Porto? And is there any object in the Universe that has no name? A little ZAP reader sent us these three questions — and we couldn’t help but try to answer them.

O Francisco7 years old, has a curiosity the size of the world. He sent us three very interesting questions, which are not easy to answer. But we went to investigate.

The first of the three questions is fascinating, and has no direct answer: what was the first man to be born on Earth?

Human evolution it was a gradual processwith small steps, that lasted millions of years. We cannot say that on a given day, millions of years ago, a couple of non-humans gave birth to the first human.

Instead, small genetic changes accumulated over countless generations, in a transition so slow that it is impossible to point out where one species ends and another begins, just as it is not possible to know which was born first, the egg or the chicken — despite a recent study suggesting that .

From a scientific point of viewour current species, the A wise manappeared approximately 300,000 years in Africabut it is very difficult to know when the .

But ours is not the first human species; all species of Genus Homo they are human. Thus, the “first man”, if it were possible to distinguish him, would have been an individual from the first species of the genus Homo.

Until a few years ago, scientists considered that the A handy manthe first hominin to use tools, would have been the first species Homo. According to one published this month, .

However, it turns out that, in a published in 2015 in Sciencescientists described the oldest fossil attributed to the genus Homo: a jaw found in Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia, around 2.80 million years old, which was given the name of LD 350-1.

This jaw is attributed to the genus Homobut without a defined species; is too old and too fragmented to be safely classified as H. handy or H. rudolfensis.

Thus, since it is not possible to know exactly who was the first Man to be born, we can say that LD 350-1 could be the first known.

However, if we leave the scientific field and start analyzing the issue of religious point of viewthe question becomes very simple to answer: the first Man on Earth It was obviously Adam — at least, for Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The first car on the bridge

Unlike the first, Francisco’s second question will technically have a concrete answer: what was the first car to cross the Freixo bridgein Porto? Some must have been.

Unfortunately, we were unable to find records that would allow us to identify which vehicle had the privilege of making the crossing for the first time; we can only try to guess who was there.

With about 1,500 meters and eight lanes traffic, this road bridge over the Douro River is the the most upstream and the lowest elevation of the six bridges that connect Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia; it is actually a double bridge, with two twin decks spaced about 10 cm apart.

The bridge was designed by engineers António Reis and Daniel de Sousaand opened in 1995, seven years after its construction began.

Inevitably, at a given moment, one of the bridge decks will have been completed; one of the responsible engineers or technicians will then have entered your jeep and carried out the first “technical” crossing from Freixo Bridge. We bet that António Reis and Daniel Sousa wanted to claim the privilege — but we don’t know the make of the jeep…

If we are talking about first “official crossing” of the bridge, it would have occurred on the date of its inauguration by the then Junta Autónoma das Estradas, on the day September 16, 1995.

We contacted Infraestruturas de Portugal, from whom we asked for information about the inauguration of the bridge and its first crossing, but at the time of this publication we had not yet received a response.

So, once again we have to try to guess. According to , the inauguration ceremony took place a few weeks before that year’s legislative elections, with the presence of the then prime minister Aníbal Cavaco Silvawho was accompanied on the occasion by the Minister of Public Works, Transport and Communications, Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral.

One of these rulers must have cut the ribbon, after which they will probably both have continued the journey in the vehicle that made the first crossingthat of the bridge after its inauguration. But we await details from IP to clarify the issue…

The nameless object

Finally, Francisco’s third question has a clear and objective answer: will there be Any object in the Universe that has no name?

Sim, there are lots of objects in the universe that have no name. In fact, millions of trillions of trillions of nameless objects — or, if we want to go further, an infinite number of them.

If we talk only about objects that exist outside Earth, there are billions and billions of stars, planets, asteroids, galaxies and other celestial bodies. Many of them are already known, but Giving each one a unique name would be impossible.

Therefore, most receive only alphanumeric designations based on astronomical catalogues, with strange aspects such as HD 189733bthe planet that , or AT2025ulza possible “superkilonova” that will have .

Only a small fraction of celestial objects have traditional first names, such as stars Sirius or Betelgeuse, or the Andromeda galaxy. Generally, only the brightest, closest, or most historically significant objects are given the honors of earning a decent name.

Furthermore, there are immense celestial bodies that They weren’t even cataloged.. With increasingly powerful telescopes, like , we are constantly discovering new objects, distant galaxies, small asteroids, faint stars — that are waiting to be catalogued.

But in fact, the theory currently accepted by cosmologists suggests that the Universe is infiniteso there will always be an infinite number of yet unnamed cosmic objects.

E if we are only talking about Earthare there any unnamed objects? Well, there are countless terrestrial objects that don’t have a first name.

Every grain of sand on a beach, every leaf on a tree, every object we use in our daily lives does not normally have its own name; it has a generic name, “a grain of sand” or “a pen”, and we can even call it Bic — but (if we are a normal person) we don’t call a pen Maria.

We can say that all objects have a generic nameeven if they do not have a specific name; We only give proper names to objects that have specific relevance, whether geographic, historical, cultural or personal. All other objects exist anonymouslyand, unlike the stars, without the hope of one day earning the right to their name.

So, is there any object that doesn’t even have a generic name, that isn’t classified in any category?

There are probably. It’s got to be out there somewhere, but we haven’t discovered it yet. The moment we find it, our brain will immediately classify it into a category and give it a generic name. Even if it’s… “thing”.