Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" - Chapter 2: Humility

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah even if we could travel at near the speed of light, say 99%, even that's not fast enough, you need some kind of faster than light travel, warp drive, space folding, black holes, what have you.

[BinnZ]

Our mind can travel at infinite speed. Why can't our body follow? It's because it's trapped in a frame. Imagine we could use the 90% of our brain that's not being used to unfold the windings with the frame, and jump? Wouldn't that be excellent?

[Art Blade]

I was looking over your shoulder as you were typing that, Binn..

[PZ]

 

[fragger]

Speaking of humility and pale dots, I recently came across this on You Tube. It's been there for about five years, I can't believe I haven't seen it before.

The original Hubble image this is taken from is a 69,356 x 22,230, or 1.541 billion pixel, image, which required 4.3 Gb of disk space to store. For a single image. Consider me gobsmacked.

What a time to be alive... Since an early age I've had an abiding love of all things astronomical, but I never thought I would get to see individual stars in the Andromeda galaxy, two-and-a-half million light years distant. I salute you, Hubble!

And just wait until they get the James Webb orbital telescope up

The title of an Issac Asimov story comes to mind - The Stars Like Dust. Watch and prepare to feel insignificant (I recommend full-screening the video).

[mandru]

Fragger, nice find on that Hubble video. 

Our mind can travel at infinite speed. Why can't our body follow? ...

Sci-Fi author Alfred Bester wrote a novel that I particularly enjoyed (though it contains some mind bending"Unframed" situations) called "The Stars My Destination".  Wikipedia has a better description than I care to post here other than to say many prominent Sci-Fi authors include this novel in their personal Top 10 all time favorites.

Paraphrasing from the novel; "When our eyes flick from one star to another the focus of our attention instantly hops uncountable scores of light years".  Your post reminded me of that book. 

[Dweller_Benthos]

... and none of those stars have planets with life on them? I seriously doubt it. I wonder if they are looking at us saying the same thing....

[fragger]

I haven't heard of that book mandru, I might try to get hold of a copy. Sounds interesting. Thanks

@D_B, and this is just one galaxy. When you consider that there more galaxies in the universe than there are stars in that one image, and that planetary formation is an almost inevitable consequence of the formation of stars themselves, you might as well conclude there are worlds without end.

It may be true that there are many certain conditions that have to be met in order for life to establish itself on any given planet, but when you're talking about numbers this big, I think it's inevitable that those conditions will be met somewhere, and likely quite a lot of somewheres.

Estimates of the total number of stars in our galaxy generally vary between 100 to 250 billion. Let's say, 200 billion. Now let's take our solar system as "average" in terms of the number of planets in it (there isn't anything to suggest that our solar system is in any way unique in having planets, as the ever-rising number of discovered exoplanets strongly suggests). Let's round that average up to 10 planets - some stars may have many more than that, some may have none at all.

That brings us to 2,000,000,000,000, or two trillion, planets, in this one galaxy alone. The conditions for life to manifest itself MUST exist somewhere in that plethora of worlds, one would think. The principles of statistics would pretty much guarantee it (not that I'm any kind of statistical expert, but I do have at least a passing familiarity with some core concepts).

I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the universe is actually teeming with life, but it's all too far away for us to detect.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Not to mention, at least for intelligent life, the conditions for it to exist and thrive long enough to develop technology that allows them to see us or us to see them are very specific and fragile. How many times in the last few million years has there been one catastrophe or another that almost killed off the human race?  Heck one good caldera volcano eruption and we'll be back in the stone age.

[fragger]

That's true. Also asteroid and cometary impacts, mass coronal discharges, nova events, gamma-ray bursts... The universe is a pretty violent place. I guess life is a gamble no matter where it is.

[Art Blade]

..said the blind before he started to cross the highway for the last time.

[mandru]

... I might try to get hold of a copy. Sounds interesting. Thanks

Here's a heads up fragger.

When I Google search The Stars My Destination (originally titled Tiger Tiger) there is a link @ kingauthor.co offering a free PDF that appears to be a complete rendition of the novel. 

Free's good isn't it? 

[fragger]

Free is as good as it gets Thanks muchly, mandru I found the site and downloaded the novel, I'll probably start reading it tonight. Good timing, I was looking for something new to read.

[BinnZ]

Here's a heads up fragger.

When I Google search The Stars My Destination (originally titled Tiger Tiger) there is a link @ kingauthor.co offering a free PDF that appears to be a complete rendition of the novel. 

Free's good isn't it? 

Thanx Mandru, got it too

Great site btw 

[mandru]