Posted on 08/08/2018 10:36:52 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
Ever since the Renaissance, the sciences have dealt human beings a steady stream of humiliations. The Copernican revolution dismantled the idea that humanity stood at the center of the universe. A cascade of discoveries from the late-18th to the early-20th century showed that humanity was a lot less significant than some had imagined. The revelation of the geological timescale stacked millions and billions of years atop our little cultural narratives, crumbling all of human history to dust. The revelation that we enjoy an evolutionary kinship to fish, bugs, and filth eroded the in-God’s-image stuff. The disclosure of the size of the galaxy—and our position on a randomly located infinitesimal dot in it—was another hit to human specialness. Then came relativity and quantum mechanics, and the realization that the way we see and hear the world bears no relation to the bizarre swarming of its intrinsic nature.
Literature began to taste and probe these discoveries. By the 19th century, some writers had already hit upon the theme—meaninglessness—that would come to dominate the 20th century in a thousand scintillating variations, from Cthulhu stories to Samuel Beckett’s plays. But by the turn of the new millennium, it had become clear that this sense of meaninglessness was no longer up to date.
In 1961, Frank Drake developed an equation with a string of variables to try to determine the frequency of intelligent life. Maybe planets are just very rare? They’re not. Perhaps few planets orbit their star in the “Goldilocks zone” where it isn’t too hot or cold? No, it seems that lots do. This may sound like another round of Copernican humiliation: In a galaxy with up to 400 billion stars,surely there’s some other intelligent, technological species. But humans have been scanning the spectra for decades and have found nothing.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
That’ll change over time. The moon is drifting away from Earth at 1.6”. The further away it gets the slower the Earths rotation will be. Gonna suck in a couple thousand years.
No, no ... I believe you’ve covered the spectrum :o)
billions and billions
“The Copernican revolution dismantled the idea that humanity stood at the center of the universe.”
In an infinite universe the observer is always in the middle. The same would be true for a multiverse. I’m just sayin’
“I’m good with either possibility although there is a severe lack of evidence that there is any other life than what’s found on earth.”
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Evolution is preached as if it is commonly occurring everywhere. PBS has so many religious messages on evolution complete with plenty of ape-man cgis. Never is the theory/religion questioned.
Especially if that bathroom is at Wal-Mart. We KNOW aliens are sighted there, regularly! 8=D
Negatron! ;)
Whether you’re an evolutionist or a young-earth-creationist or something in between, everyone knows modern humans have only been around for a few thousand years.
If we could achieve the inconceivable accomplishment of light-speed travel, it would take a span equivalent to the entire existence of modern humanity just reach most solar systems in the universe (based on modern scientific estimates of their distances).
Just speeding up and slowing down, under the parameters of our current understanding of physics would take years in order to avoid being ripped apart. And this does not address the energy and mechanical challenges of achieving such speeds.
What are the implications? Even if the Universe did have lots of intelligent life, we can never interact with it using any known technology. Interactions with alien life requires the discovery of faster-than-light travel, aka time-travel.
If time travel is possible, it is far more likely that any “aliens” we encounter would be from earth’s own future rather than some other galaxy.
Time Travel gives Me Gas!
Gods way of winking...
Thanks!
You don’t really believe in the “ancient astronaut’ theories promoted by the wack-os on the “History” Channel show, “Ancient Aliens”, do you?
Absolutely no evidence whatsoever but long on conjecture.
... but viruses and microbes will wipe us out because future astronauts will be so moronic that they explore other planets without protective space suits and helmets ...
... stupidest movie ever ...
I remain strongly agnostic on this. I’m just sayin’
The moon is only at the “Exact correct size & Distance” some of the time. Other times you get partial or annular (ring of fire) eclipses.
Jupiter’s moons also at times fit exactly over the sun from each other.
with all the cellphone cameras you’d think someone would have got a good picture by now ...
Scullyite!
Once again they fail to comprehend just how freaking big space is and just how little of it we can really see, and how little of it can see us. We see light that’s thousands of years old from some star, don’t see “signs” (not that we’re sure what those are) of life near by and assume there’s nobody there now. If our earliest radio signals were strong enough to be detected off planet (which they aren’t) they’d be detectable to less than 1% of the galaxy, waves travel fast, but space is big. And of course if, somehow, right now, somebody were picking up those signals and answering in kind, we wouldn’t hear it for 150 years. Or alternatively they could have heard and responded 50 years ago, and the signal is still 100 years out.
Space is big, our knowledge of what’s going on in it that might indicate intelligent life is basically 0. Until we find a way to get out there we’re groping in the dark without even knowing what we’re looking for.
Of course SETI is only looking at the carrier wave WE use, which is actually a very small percentage of available carrier waves. We picked those to monitor because they’re easy. At least for our technology. Completely ignoring that somebody else might have invented something else and might find that section of the spectrum challenging. It’s a flawed project from the start.
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