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As a lover of science (as a hobby only) I really love this stuff, but it is so difficult to grasp that I kind of gave up on it. It is simply entertaining to me. I love science so much, but I don't have the mind for it, at least for the very advanced stuff like this. Thanks for the informative post.
As a lover of science (as a hobby only) I really love this stuff, but it is so difficult to grasp that I kind of gave up on it. It is simply entertaining to me. I love science so much, but I don't have the mind for it, at least for the very advanced stuff like this. Thanks for the informative post.
You're welcome.......the TV series will air weekly on PBS and if you enjoy Science I'd say you will be interested in the program and be able to gleen knowledge from watching.
It will air November 9th, 16th and 23rd.....I'm sure you can catch the first episode when it is replayed.
Its very hard to comprehend the size of the universe. Our solar system is located in the Milky Way galaxy among 400 billion of stars with even more planets. In cosmic scale, those stars are just around the block from us. It takes over 250 million earth years for our solar system to circle the center of the galaxy. The Milky Way has a diameter of 30,660 parsecs. One parsec is 3.26 light years or 19 trillion miles! Multiply 19 trillion by 30,660 and you get the diameter of our galaxy in miles. It is estimated that there are more than 170 billion galaxies in the "observable" universe and each galaxy is separated by MILLIONS of parsecs. That means there is A LOT of dead space with no stars and planets that is complete darkness. What if these 170 billion galaxies circle the center of something else! We cant even comprehend the size of the universe or how many planets are out there. This doesn't even include multiple dimensions! And people say Earth is the only planet with life or intelligent life like ourselves?
Its very hard to comprehend the size of the universe. Our solar system is located in the Milky Way galaxy among 400 billion of stars with even more planets. In cosmic scale, those stars are just around the block from us. It takes over 250 million earth years for our solar system to circle the center of the galaxy. The Milky Way has a diameter of 30,660 parsecs. One parsec is 3.26 light years or 19 trillion miles! Multiply 19 trillion by 30,660 and you get the diameter of our galaxy in miles. It is estimated that there are more than 170 billion galaxies in the "observable" universe and each galaxy is separated by MILLIONS of parsecs. That means there is A LOT of dead space with no stars and planets that is complete darkness. What if these 170 billion galaxies circle the center of something else! We cant even comprehend the size of the universe or how many planets are out there. This doesn't even include multiple dimensions! And people say Earth is the only planet with life or intelligent life like ourselves?
You raise some excellent points, although there's more to space than just planets, stars and galaxies. You're quite right that the universe is extremely difficult to comprehend. However, I don't think the point of the thread is about whether or not the Earth the only planet with intelligent life though. There probably is, but we haven't yet confirmed the existence of any form of life elsewhere in the solar system, let alone elsewhere in the galaxy or the universe.
You're right that space seems pretty empty. But empty of what? If we limit it to just being empty of planets, stars and galaxies, then we'd still have to qualify whether space is truly empty or not. Even the space between stars in the galaxy or between galaxies, or great voids in the universe seem empty, that isn't really so. For example, sometimes stars get booted out of galaxies, out into intergalactic space. There are stars in deep space, just more widely spaced apart. There are atoms and gasses in deep intergalactic space as well. There are particles such as photons in deep space, otherwise we wouldn't be able to observe other galaxies. And there are various forces at work throughout the entire universe. Space isn't as empty as it might seem to be.
Regarding multiple dimensions, it depends on what is meant by dimensions. We evolved in a way that enables us to perceive things in 3 dimensions. That doesn't necessarily mean there are only 3 dimensions we live in. Some dimensions could be too large or too small for us to detect. Could there be worlds in a 7-dimensional configuration? We don't know because we don't know what those extra dimensions are or exactly how they work. It's likely that higher dimensions are intrinsically linked with the dimensions we know about, but that would only suggest that any entities existing in a configuration of more dimensions that we know about would still share the 3 dimensions we perceive. In other words, we'd be able to detect their presence in 3 dimensions, but still have an incomplete view of them.
If there is other intelligent life forms in the universe, that doesn't automatically mean they'd be like us or resemble us. Once again, although we know life exists on the Earth, we don't have any evidence of life elsewhere, even though the probability is high that there are other life forms in the cosmos. The problem for us at the present time is that we still don't know exactly why life took hold, thrived and evolved on the Earth as it has, nor do we know exactly what conditions may be required for life to form as it has on the Earth. Life might well form under different conditions, but if that's true, then it's pretty doubtful they'd be anything like us. So far, all we can really say is that we know about life on Earth, and we use the Earth as a model to presume how life might develop or look elsewhere under diffferent conditions, such as stronger or weaker gravity, a water world, different atmospheres, multiple moons or no moon, etc. We're still in our infancy in exploring the cosmos. There's still much more to learn. It's fair to say the universe is still a very strange place.
Its very hard to comprehend the size of the universe. Our solar system is located in the Milky Way galaxy among 400 billion of stars with even more planets. In cosmic scale, those stars are just around the block from us. It takes over 250 million earth years for our solar system to circle the center of the galaxy. The Milky Way has a diameter of 30,660 parsecs. One parsec is 3.26 light years or 19 trillion miles! Multiply 19 trillion by 30,660 and you get the diameter of our galaxy in miles. It is estimated that there are more than 170 billion galaxies in the "observable" universe and each galaxy is separated by MILLIONS of parsecs. That means there is A LOT of dead space with no stars and planets that is complete darkness. What if these 170 billion galaxies circle the center of something else! We cant even comprehend the size of the universe or how many planets are out there. This doesn't even include multiple dimensions! And people say Earth is the only planet with life or intelligent life like ourselves?
To quote from the movie "Contact" (and to paraphrase the original quote by Carl Sagan's Cosmos upon which the movie is based)...
If it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space
Why wouldn't there be multiple universes? If ours began with the expansion of matter by a sigularity why wouldn't there be others waiting to expand as well?
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