Posted on 04/12/2005 6:23:50 PM PDT by KevinDavis
BOULDER - When Harvard University astronomer Zoë Leinhardt stares up at the star-spangled night sky, she finds it hard to believe there aren't other Earthlike planets out there, perhaps teeming with life.
"It seems unlikely that we're that special in the universe," Leinhardt, a post-doctoral fellow, said Monday at a NASA astrobiology conference.
(Excerpt) Read more at rockymountainnews.com ...
Yeah, if it is not teeming with life, so we could incorporate our own and make it into another human society. Actually we could start now and begin to terraform Mars.
Maybe my dream is utopian and childiss, but Mars should be a Free for all territory like the US of A wanted China to be when most of the worlds empires were merkantilistic and wanted to split China up between them. With single (basic)law and constitution, but to make everyone happy, the central government should have very, very limited powers, so every community will set their own laws about most things, except maybe property rights and other basic individualistic rights.
I have become fond of the idea of private creation and enforcement of law, that is all things should be done by private means by market forces, even laws, regulations and the enforcement of laws. It sounds with first glance rather absurd idea, but exactly that is the reason it should be done on Mars, do something different, do something new, as it will be a new place that can start fresh, why not do something fresh?
Actually it has been tried before, in my own country in a limited way, when it was settled around thousand years ago. And it worked for around 300 years, as the famous economist David Friedman argues for in his book, The Machinery of Freedom, where he illustrates how such a society could work in the complexities of the modern age:
(http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html)
The Icelandic/private enforcement of law exsperience, with the added private creation of law like Friedman argues for, could work well for Mars, as there will be many different kinds of people from different parts of the world (like here were many different people from all over the Viking/Kelt world), that will have to coexist so there is no room for coercion. Specially as the people on Mars will come from many different kinds of cultures and societies, so integration or adaptation to the existing one is out of the question, as there is no existing one, and even if there was, it would not cover the whole of Mars.
Coercion and disrespect to different cultures will only led to violence and even wars, Mars could not afford such, it nearly destroyed Europe like has been mentioned, although it ultimately allowed it to rise stronger than ever and rule the world (temporaly). We certeinly would not like that either, having Mars recolonise the Earth after it has enhances its fighting abilites after centuries of interwarfare, so we will have to do things right when it comes to colonization of Mars.
Hopefully that time comes soon, and in fact I beliewe it will be sooner if we allow capitalism to thrive freely in space, with the abilities of creating property rights than if we are going to do it all though governments like we have been doing, it just does not happen fast or soon enough, most of the technology is allready known but yeat nothing happens. I beliewe that to be because there is not enough incentives for individuals and companies, big or small to go into space and make it part of the human world.
We will all gain if the Moon, Mars, even Venus and beyond will be settled thus becoming part of the human exsperience and the endevour of our species, we have great potential and the possibilities are at our fingertips, but we are allowing it to slip away because we are fighting over spoils, who should own what, or even if anyone should own anything, of things that are worthless to us as they are today, unreachable and uninhapited. Here is an interesting aftircle about the need for property rights in space:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/980815paper.html
When the worth of some things is unmeasurable by the market, it is in all real sense worthless. Nobody can bid for a portion of the Moon or Mars today, so nobody can know if he can get enough returns for his investments in going there, so nothing ever happens, nobody goes there, because nobody can create ownership and property rights there. We need to change that, and that needs to change very soon. And we need to have a lot more babies ;)
There are billions of stars in the Milky Way, of which our sun is but one. There are billions of other galaxies, besides our Milky Way. There are probably planets with life forms very close to humans, there are probably life forms that are millions of years more advanced, millions of years less advanced, some that look like insects, some that are unimaginable, or would fit in a sci-fi movie. It's probably a good thing that they are millions of light-years distant from us.
There are probably a few millions different religious views out there too.
Then look around and think about how little we know about this massive universe, what our imagination and persistence has invented to feed, clothe, house, cure our people. No other creature on earth is capable of the same. No chimp could invent the telegraph, the automobile, a pacemaker. etc. The animal kingdom does not think beyond its' own instinctive survival.
Yes, we're special.
"It seems unlikely that we're that special in the universe...".....i'm not so sure that we're not. I often wondered if our DNA is not merely a waveform expression of a set or series of waves derived from where we are in time and space....Thomas Aquinas says we are light...
That's interesting. Though I wonder how many that diverge from an essentially "ethical monotheistic" framework.
If only one in every billion planets has intelligent life, there would be literally billions of populated planets in the universe. The odds make it very likely that they are out there.
As long as NASA is only interested in playing around with robots; and as long as there is no practical way to reach them, does it really matter how many e-type planets are ever discovered by NASA scientists?
Instead, we should be looking for a way to 'build' our own.
Until "D. D. Harriman" comes along, and kicks the government up along side the head, we ain't going anywhere, fast & expensive.
I agree with your assesment. To say that god created this universe with billions upon billions of stars and god knows how many galaxies there are just for us is wrong. Who knows there maybe other humans out there as well. As for the religion I agree. Some may worship god, but in their own way. That is how I see it.
A lot of people just don't realize how little we've explored the galaxy. They have the sense that we can more or less see and hear with precision across the galaxy: So where *are* they?!?
In reality, the SETI project doesn't even come near the minimum requirements to pick up a reasonable signal with 1000 light years of earth, and virtually nothing from beyond that. The galaxy is so vast that if there were 10,000 transmitting civilizations in the Milky Way then the nearest would average out to 1000 light years away.
As for seeing things, we can barely get a fuzzy image of a Jupiter size object practically on top of us by galactic standards. Immense stretches of the galaxy are unseeable by us with any clarity due to intervening objects - especially the regions beyond the central core of the galaxy.
So, let's not give up quite yet!
If they do find one, chances are that SG-1 has already been there...
Unless of course there is only one Creator.
There has been news about exploding stars lately....
Think big! It will be great when most anyone can visit another earth-like planet. Others visit earth, how hard can it be? We need only shift the focus of humanity from its present fascination with discord to one of unity acting toward that true freedom which is manifest in new lands and limitless adventure. We fight over a crumb while the feast awaits.
"It would be great when we find a earth like planet.."
To what end? It is impossible to get there.
But would the Creator manifest himself in the same way to them as he has to us?
You know the week that the Wright Brothers flew, the New York Times had an Editorial saying that it would be a hundred years before man would fly.
Yes, and no. Ray Bradbury wrote a story called "The Man" in which astronauts came upon a planet which had just been visited by a Christ-like person who taught love, forgiveness and peace. He was not crucified on that planet, but then, the Christ would not have to be crucified on that planet because His Atonement was infinite and encompassed all God's creations, of which that planet and its inhabitants were just one. Our civilization is special in that it is probably the only one which would kill its creator. It is also probably the black sheep of the universe.
The planets which are habitable, and I believe they are infinite in number, would probably be in various stages of development, just like our planet went through various stages of development, but the end result is to make the planet habitable for those created in the image of God, therefore human or human-like insofar as the planet's physical characteristics allowed. They would have two legs, two arms, a torso, head, eyes, ears and mouth. There might be a lot of variations compared to us but then there are a lot of variations just among earthlings, are there not?
Yes, the creator loves His children and would manifest Himself to them as He manifested Himself to us because He wants all His children to follow Him and so must show the path to tread. God is no respecter of persons.
Would we be allowed to meet them? Probably not in this life but maybe after we have all met at the Savior's feet.
Just my opinion. I don't mean to get into theological arguments, especially because I must shortly leave and head to bed. Just trying to chill out after completing the tax thing today. It just doesn't make sense to assume that the vast universe has only one tiny planet with God's children. Shalom. :)
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