Why I Believe We Are Not Alone In The Universe – Intelligent Discussion

reply to post by poet1b


Poet.....'So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish' was not a movie reference!!!

It was, actually, the Title of Douglas Adams' fifth and (tragically) final Novel in the series he began with "The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (which was, firstly a BBC TV series, then a Hollywood Motion Picture).

'So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish' is stunningly brilliant, and a funny read, as are all of Douglas Adams' books. BUT, only if you understand British humour....if not, you will likely be lost in the irony.....

Hint: I you do NOT like Monty Python, then you will NOT like Douglas Adams. Same if you do NOT like Chef Gordon Ramsey's show, on BBC America.

You either get British Humour, or you don't. There seems to be no middle ground....

I could attempt to explain the title of the fifth book, but it's pointless.....since I want to discuss the OP anyway!

Probably repeating myself, by saying that the size of our UNIVERSE is beyond human comprehension. Problem I've seen, in my lifetime, is the confusion between the terms 'Universe' and 'Galaxy'.

Let's just focus, for now, on our 'Galaxy'.

A 'Galaxy' is a collection of stars....in our example, we are a collection of about two hundred BILLION stars. If you were to go to a beach in California, and scoop up a dump-truck worth of sand, and counted every grain of sand.....you would STOP at two Billion, and would throw the rest away.

That's how BIG our Galaxy is!

Well....I'll try another example....the speed of light. It is 186,000 Miles per Second...or roughly 300,000 Kilometers per Second. (Metric is easier to use, and should be learned by everyone, even Americans)

Now, the Moon is, by this measurement, about 1.2 'light-seconds' away. That means it takes normal radio signals (which, of course, travel at the Speed of Light) about 1.2 seconds to reach the Moon, from the Earth. So, of course, a 'round-trip' of the radio signal would be twice that....or about 2.4 seconds.

THIS is why, when you see old footage of Apollo missions, you hear the delay...people talk, and can't wait, talk again, others talk over them....but they got used to it, and learned to wait.

WHEN you see some news stations, using a satellite.....well, they're using a 'geostationary' satellite....this is a satellite that is about 25,000 miles above the Earth's surface.....the speed of light is still a factor....even though it's about one-tenth the distance from the Earth to the Moon...it still must be processed, and everyone knows there's another few split seconds involved....so THAT is why when you see a 'satellite' feed, on live TV, there is still that 'time lag'.....it's that pesky 'Speed of Light' problem!!!

I should explain 'geostationary'.....but I'd like those interested to look it up for themselves....

As to being 'alone' in the "UNIVERSE"....I think we need to focus, first, on our own Galaxy. It is about 100,000 Light Years in diameter, and about 30,000 LY thick, at the center.

(A LY is the distance that light will travel, at 186,000 miles per sec/or 300,000 Kilometers per second) in one Earth year.

Calculate that out....one second, times 60 per minute, times 60 minutes per hour, times 24 hours per day, times 365 days in a year.....

Now!! Try to imagine the possibilities....of just our one ONE Galaxy....THEN, realize that there are many Hundreds of Billions of OTHER Galaxies, in the Universe. (No worry, most of those other Galaxies are so FAR away, unlikely we'd ever encounter them...)

reply to post by Dave Rabbit


Some cheeky quotes about the subject from historical figures :

"To consider the earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet,only one grain will grow"
Methodorus.
Greek philosopher of the fourth century B.C.

"Heaven and earth are large,yet in the whole of space they are but as small as a grain of rice.......How unreasonable it would be to suppose that,besides the heaven and earth which we can see,there are no other heavens and no other earths"
Teng Mu.
Chinese philosopher of thirteenth century A.D.

"The universe is infinitely wide.
Its vastness holds innumerable atoms....
So it must be unthinkable that
Our sky and our round world are precious and unique....
Out beyond our world there are,elsewhere,
Other assemblages of matter making other worlds.
Ours is not the only one in air´s embrace"
Lucretius.
Roman philosopher of the first century B.C.

"Innumerable suns exist;innumerable earths revolve about these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun.
Living beings inhabit these worlds"
Giordano Bruno.
Italian monk of the sixteenth century (also burnt at the stake for these views by religious bigots).

"Looking at the stars always makes me dream,as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map.
Why ,I ask myself,shouldn´t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?"
Vincent Van Gogh.

"Why may not every one of these stars or suns have as great a retinue as our sun of planets,with their moons,to wait on them?...They must have their plants and animals,nay and their rational creatures too,and those as great admirers,and as diligent observers of the heavens as ourselves...."
Christiaan Huygens.
Dutch physicist and astronomer of the seventeenth century.

"It is precisely because I believe theologically there is a being called God,and that He is infinite in intelligence,freedom, and power,that I cannot
take it upon myself to limit what He might have done.
Once He created the Big Bang.....He could have envisioned it going in billions of directions as it evolved,including billions of life-forms and billions of kinds of intelligent beings...
As a theologian,I would say that this proposed search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is also a search for knowing and understanding God through His works-especially those works that most reflect Him.Finding others than ourselves would mean knowing Him better"
Theodore M. Hesburgh ,C.S.C.,
University of Notre Dame

"I do not know what I may appear to the world,but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore,and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary,whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me"
Sir Isaac Newton.

"The earth is the cradle of mankind,but one does not live in the cradle forever"
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.

"Being an optimist,I support a persistent search for beacon signals of extraterrestrial civilisations"
Andrei D. Sakharov

"This is a present from a small distant world,a token of our sounds,our science,our images,our music,our thoughts,and our feelings.
We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.
We hope someday,having solved the problems we face,to join a community of galactic civilisations.
This record represents our hope and our determination,and our good will in a vast and awesome universe"
U.S.President Jimmy Carter.
1977 Voyager Spacecraft interstellar record.

reply to post by karl 12


karl 12:

Thank you for finding those quotes, through the years.

It shows how the compassion of Humanity can show. It also signifies the ability of our Human Brain to comprehend BEYOND what we are 'told', or 'led to believe', and to imagine other 'possiblites'.