Perspective

How significant are we? This puts things into perspective I reckon.

Warning: Its a bit geeky.

http://www.viralnova.com/galaxies-in-space/

 

Reading things like that makes me wonder how people can think we are alone in the universe.

Unfortunately it also makes you realise that should a much more intelligent space traveling species exist there is almost an impossibility it would ever know of our existence, and would probally be long extinct before it even got close.

It would be like colouring a single grain of sand on a beach in the UK red, and a single grain of sand in Australia red and waiting for them to find each other.

Makes me sad, wish I was born a few thousand years later lol

 

"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Today?
Today is a gift. That is why we call it the present.
Love that Woo....
Jenny

 

This used to be my thinking too, but now I'm not so sure.

According to the most widely accepted theory of life, the universe and everything in it, there were several major steps in the formation of the universe as we know. The first stars had to be born and die before many of the elements were manufactured from that most basic of atoms, hydrogen.

The theory goes that our solar system formed very early in the stage where things like iron and other elements that we know of today had been formed in sufficient quantities to be useful.

Life on earth is believed to have came into being very soon after conditions permitted, while earth's atmosphere was still very toxic by modern standards and earth was still a pretty nasty place.

If the accepted theory is correct, then the implication is that life in the universe started as soon as it could, and it started here, while many other parts of the universe were still in their youth, even lacking the existence of many of the elements needed for life. That also implies that there is a very real possibility that us human sorts are the most 'developed' lifeforms in the universe, and everywhere else there is either no life or very primitive life.

I.e. the implication is that we could be the first technologically advanced species in the universe.

Which makes for an even more profound implication. Given the thousands or even millions of years it takes for our radio signals (which is currently the fastest and most long range comms we have) to reach other solar systems, quite possibly our whole species will be dust by the time those signals reach a geologically mental planet with a sea full of amoeba.

 

Sounds interesting, but I cant help but think "typical humans think they are the centre of everything"

Of course I have no reason not to believe it as I have done no research what so ever, but in my mind I like to think that somewhere out there is another intelligent species, maybe thinking that they too are alone.

Not sure where I heard it (probally on a QI marathon) but if there were multiple intelligent species in the universe the chances of any of them actually bumping into each other are so small due to the large amounts of emptiness and the time it would take to cross it.

The other thing is, Humans evolved quite late after the planet was able to support life, what if a planet similar to ours evolved an intelligent species before us (skipping the dinosaur period)

 

We might even all be part of a modest computer program, some kids experiment in artificial intelligence.

It makes sense. We're told that there are physical limits in the universe that prevent us from acting outside of defined constraints. We can never exceed the speed of light for example, and according to the boffins, nature has put in place no less than two mechanisms to ensure this is the case, namely that it requires infinite energy to propel matter to light speed, and in any case time slows down and stops at light speed so that as you approach that barrier, it become impossible to do anything to change the state further. Add that to the vast distances involved and its in effect a very real barrier, much as us programmer sorts would implement constraints on our programs to prevent them from just randomly corrupted memory occupied by the operating system or other processes

And why can't we move through time except forwards at the predefined rate? And why, despite our immense minds, is our contact with anything outside of ourselves so very limited? One person holds a vast amount of knowledge and experience, yet they can only possibly convey a tiny bit of it. Much like a programmer designs interfaces that let their programs holding terrabytes of data interact with each other by passing a few bytes or kilobytes at a time.

And how come despite our apparent knowledge, there are still many things that are so far beyond our comprehension that we have to create concepts of supernatural entities to explain things, just as us programmers design abstract entities in code to mask the complexity of the underlying program?

See, reality is an illusion and we're all just a simulation. I'm proof, you think this is written by a person, yet all you're seeing is abstract symbols appearing on your screen, formatted using the common interface we refer to as written language but really you're just seeing patterns of photons emerging from your screen.

Of course, I could just be in a silly mood, or am I?