The universe with its constants gives us physics, stars give us chemistry and planets give us biology
There is quite a bit of talk about the fine tuning of the universe and its implications.
There are a number of interacting constants that are just right to give us a "Goldilocks universe". Add to this that not only that we find ourselves in just the right place within our galaxy, with just the right star and a planet in the "Goldilocks zone".
So the question comes up, was this all prepared for us to be this way or are we here simply in this almost perfect place in our universe simply because this is a spot where intelligent, self aware and questioning life would naturally emerge?
This then begs the question: how many other Goldilocks spots exist in this or other universes where beings have emerged that can ask the same question?
I suppose we are all free to develop our own answer to this question but I for one like observing, even if were just for the sake of observing.
For instance, how wonderful is the process withing stars that forge the elements and then spew them out in order to make them available for building planets? and all this simply because of the interaction of a few fundamental forces.
How wonderfully simple and yet complex are the information storing and replicating mechanisms of RNA and DNA that give rise to life and all of biology?
Is not all this something marvelous to behold, wondrous to begin to comprehend and so awe inspiring that it forces one to step back in admiration of it all?
The night sky has fascinated and inspired awe for millennia. What a pity it is that in our light polluted cities most of us have lost touch with this celestial tapestry and become ever more focused on our rat race below.
I saw a few notable people recently talking about whether or not aliens exist and they said probably not, but in my opinion statistically there has to be another perfect alignment somewhere.
When we talk of aliens, we need to stipulate a) that it's 'intelligent life' we're talking about and b) that it's contemporaneous intelligent life we're talking about.
If mankind fails to reign-in its greed (more specifically, the greed of entrepreneurial monsters), the world will almost certainly continue to suffer. What the breaking point is, no-one knows and when it will happen, no-one can say, but the distance we've come since the industrial revolution (and the damage we've done to the planet in that period) hardly leaves me optimistic that we'll survive much more than a century.
Will we 'reach for the stars'? (Like in the films, say.) Maybe a few filthy rich entrepreneurs will time everything right to be able to leave the planet when we're knee-deep in a swamp by having craft ready, and take the opportunity to do so, but maybe they won't be prepared in time through lacking necessary technologies.
So, alien life, intelligent alien life, will they be around / still be around in this window of opportunity? If they've not yet discovered how to travel distances measured in lightyears, then maybe all this is a moot point as we'll never get to meet due to physics. My very smartest money is on the bet that we'll never discover extraterrestrial life wiser than an amoeba. But it captivates people and makes for great sci-fi so we can all still live intrigued by the prospect of others (preferably non-hostile others) being out there and en route to an as-of-yet unplanned rendez-vous with us some time in the not-so distant future.
Were we to detect intelligent life, communicate with them and even plan such a meet-up, I would expect it would require a generational thing. It would be the very distant descendants of the original pioneers who would get to enjoy the experience, I'd imagine. We'd need big craft, improved recycling works, willing participants and nuclear power powering it all. Not impossible, just hard to pull off, I'd say.
I'd say we need way more than that. We're going to have to invent stuff that defies the current "laws" of physics as we know them.
I agree we need to invent some things, but I don't think that it will necessarily defy our laws of physics, since we haven't reached an ultimate conclusion on what the laws of physics are, we have theories that express the laws. And some theories, such as Superstring theory, supports 10 dimensions that would allow for dimensional space and time travel if accessible through our technology. Seeing that quantom cumputers have already been invented, I would hope that humans survive long enough to explore our neighborhood of the milky way using non-propulsion systems versus our current rocket propulsion.
I, however, don't think humans will live long enough to create multiple dimensional travel. And even if we did have that, as said before, what are the chances of finding intelligent life during our spec of an existence.
I concede your semantic point, sir. I maybe didn't t spell it out clearly enough, but that's exactly what I was getting at regarding the "laws" of physics.
Haha, I kinda assumed, but always liked this topic and just wanted to throw some words into the ethos.
Yeah, new technologies. But in the meantime, we've got to avoid nuking ourselves into oblivion / poisoning oceans much more than we're already doing and leave some rainforest untouched and free from burger restaurants who'll want to raise cattle on the land, instead. Don't get me wrong, I think the odds of detecting alien life - let alone encountering them - are pretty much zero. Just got to keep an open mind on it all, I guess.
Yeah, keep an open mind and question everything.
I was going to elaborate on an amazing theory that I read about in a book called Shantaram, but then I discovered this post https://steemit.com/philosophy/@milinko/shantaram-theory-of-ultimate-complexity by @milinko
In the sequel of this book "The Mountain Shadow", the protagonist, Shantaram, meets Khaderbhai's teacher and they discuss consciousness. And how there may be beings of a higher level of consciousness that exist in the endless universe where they're probably technologically more advanced and understand better than human beings that working together as a collective and for the betterment of other beings is a far better rational strategy than working for individual gain. With all the hype about human beings being conscious beings as compared to animals, I agree with them that we are just at the primitive stages of our consciousness, and as we develop, as a collective we would understand the folly of war and power of kindness.
Kind of similar to this, at least with the consciousness aspect, is the idea brought forth by the movie Arrival.
SPOILER - DON'T READ IF YOU WANT TO WATCH ARRIVAL
The movie presented an idea of higher consciousness achieved through learning a certain language that had no form (a sentence would happen all at once, in a single moment). Once learned and mastered, the person could then think in that language and actually travel through space time at will, seeing the future or traveling to events across the planet.
This is kinda similar to the weird aliens in the Kurt Vonnegut the Tralfamdore that has access to the 4th dimension and could perceive time at their own will.
I believe they exist and there's a lot of evidence of it in ancient/old art and other sources. Also, scientists already found planets that have environments where life could grow
yes i agree aliens do exists but in other dimensions which we cant access or not yet discovered.
There are calculations that give us a percentage. However, what I think is more fascinating than aliens is the thought that our universe is changing in cycles of expansion and compression, each time creating a new universe in which the natural laws that we consider "unchangeable" change. The universe is so fascinating as it makes everything and yet also takes everything. It is the foundation of all that exists, at least as far as we know and we do not know very much. I am excited about what we will figure out in the future. Cheers!
“statistically”? What statistics? Just curious.
tbh I dont think aliens are "biological". I think they exist and they're waiting for us to become automated(because a biology limits us tbh).
Or maybe they're just preserving us, kind of like an earth zoo where they're preserving our natural habitat so they dont contaminate us and let us progress in our own natural progress.
Then again all of these are just hypothesis without context.
I mean if you take that approach and want to talk statistics, what's the likelihood that we live in a computer-generated universe. I think the argument goes something like "If it's possible to create computer-generated universes inhabited with artificial beings then (which are self-aware but not aware they're living in a computer-generated universe #us) then by logical conclusion there would be more of these universes than there are real universes (because who ever stopped at creating just one) and if we consider that our reality isn't something special and don't assume it's the real one... then statistically speaking aren't we most likely to be living in a fake world?
An interesting thought, not sure how much weights it holds though...
As a friend of mine would say "I think it is highly arrogant of humans to think that they are the gifted ones and there is not and can not be a planet where life grows like in Earth"
How about we -- I know this is gonna sound crazy-- stay on OUR planet and fix it first, instead of immediately jumping ship and ruining other planets? Yeah? Okay then. It's bad enough we have idiots thinking our planet is only 6 thousand years old and It'd be so cool if we could travel like in movies to see all of this stuff
The planet is just fine. It's the environment that supports humans that is in trouble. If humans go extinct, the planet will still be here. Probably new life will developed that thrives on the new conditions, until they change again, then rinse and repeat.
Great post, kindersaft.
The planet should be able to get over us, though, easily enough, I'd imagine. When it's finally finished with us. Shouldn't be long, now? ;)
I agree. We're already pouring thousands of dollars into Mars research to get those few richy-riches and their richy-rich families to another planet once Earth takes its last breath.
People, sadly, don't give two damns about starving polar bears, and endangered honeybees. And you know why?
Greed.
It's greed that's stopping us from rising and becoming a utopia. Forget all those sci-fi books about floating sky-scrapers, hovering automobiles, and funky space-age outfits. That's not gonna happen. We're gonna go extinct before any of that.
I mean, haven't you heard of all those patented projects about water-driven cars that simply go quiet? No one hears a thing about them?
That's all the work of greedy gas companies shushing innovative people with bribes or with death.
On Earth's grave stone, it'll probably say, "Here lies Earth. It gave them its resources and let them live on it but they violated it and killed it, thus killing themselves. One final round of applause for human greed."
We certainly are in a Goldilocks zone here on Earth, but given the size of the universe, that doesn't necessarily seem like proof of a God to me.
No, I see evidence of a creator in chemistry, in physics. The fact that carbon dioxide and water can form glucose, and that the glucose can be used for energy, and turned back into it's old form. In fact, photosynthesis and cellular respiration are incredibly (irreducibly) complex processes that I see as proof of a creator.
The way gravity works, the way the different forces, energy, and matter interact, it is all dependent on a finely tuned series of constants. If they were off by just a bit, the universe likely could not exist. That's how I see evidence of a creator all around us.
I see it as an unfortunate side effect of atomic properties and chemical structures. Carbon 14, Hydrogen, and Oxygen are just stuck in a cycle of trying to decompose into entropy where it can be stable, and that by mere virtue of existing, we as living organisms are responsible for the prevention of energy flow into entropy. We are responsible for energy flowing back into the environment, and we are also responsible for the prevention of energy flowing in the manner that it needs to. As long as life exists, energy will flow in a cycle, instead of a river, and whether that is a good thing or not is something we can never really say.
But I bet you'll never be able to answer the question of who / what created the creator, will ya! ;)
Without invoking black magic, that is. And circular arguments. I think we should just stick with what we know / can prove. The universe cycles between big bangs and big crunches indefinitely. It has always been and always will be. If you need a metaphor for this thing we can't completely comprehend, by all means call it god, but accept that it's just a metaphor. And keep a lid on the rest of this 'religious' nonsense? (Unless you're intending on feats of mind control.)
There is zero evidence in the universe that some sort of 'creator' started it all off. None whatsoever. And claiming things that you don't understand to be 'evidence' for the very fact that you don't understand them is an extremely weak argument, indeed.
Our universe is predicated on the principle of cause and effect. That's how it works with time. In a universe where there is time, a creator does need a creator. But if a creator is the one that spoke space and TIME into existence, the cause and effect as well as the need for a creator would no longer apply to said creator.
It's nonsense to say that there was no cause of the universe, that it just is.
It's CRAZIER nonsense to say that nothing created the creator, that he just is. But you're okay with that, aren't you? SMFH
Now, if your 'creator' is just a metaphor for the universe, the unknown, infinity, eternity, love, hope, orgasm and a few other goodies, we could be getting somewhere...
I agree with @silverfortune . The craziest of all is your inability to see that there isn't a creator (with all due respect. I'm not trying to start a fight here, just getting my point across).
You claim that the world "just is", while telling @silverfortune that God cannot "just be". Matter didn't come from nothing. It came from something: God.
Now, with me being a firm believer in God, does that mean I have to reject science? Non-sense!
God and science go hand-in-hand. e.g. God created Earth, USING the Big Bang.
Now, I'm shaking my head!
The saddest part of it all imho is your inability to realise you've been poisoned. With all due respect - I'm just trying to administer the antidote to someone who has it real bad.
You shake your head some more. Shake some sense into it, even? Your view is as ridiculous as any atheist's, more so even.
"Matter didn't come from nothing. It came from something: God."
Where's your proof to the above nonsense? Matter can't come from nothing but your god certainly did? (which you're obviously happy enough to accept).
Which god is it that you believe in anyway? (I hear you're only allowed to believe in the one 'for there is only one true god' pmsl and last I heard there were over 10,000 gods being 'worshipped' by some knuckledragger somewhere or other).
Isn't this a science discussion? Why the fuck are we discussing fairy-tales on this page?
I don't need to hear any more nonsense on this subject thanks. If you need to brainwash people, find another victim. Happy holidays.
Completely agree with you that it would be necessary to look at the stars outside the city, People have other tasks now, they are chasing worldly goods and even think about the universe and if there is anyone other than us.
this guides me to think about how tiny I am compared to this vast univers where we live.
but God gives us minds that makes us bigger than anything if we use them the right way.
this is really inspiring. thanks
Lol
Thats quite harsh but you knw sometimes we can't help it life can be hard at times
Observing the skies at night in suburbs or mountains is absolutely and amazing thing, stimulating imagination, and humbling experience. I remember we used to do this all the time when we were kids. Nowadays, we don't see stars as much because of city lights as you said. Beauty we see though in the skies does make us wonder about many things. I wonder if that is how many astronomers, physicists, scientists fell in love with knowledge and science.
An unadulterated night sky is one of the most breathtaking views to behold. I couldn't ask to live in a better location to view it, either. Hardly any light pollution; makes for a perfect view of the Milky Way.
With the vastness of the universe there's not a doubt in my mind that there is other intelligent life outside of our own. I find it highly unlikely, though, that we will every cross paths, or at least in any perceivable amount of time.
It’s crazy to think how tiny we are in this vast universe, living in the Goldilocks zone. However, I don’t believe that we are alone as there are way too many galaxies and universes.
I understand your (and many others') train of thought, but don't you find it odd that after all our scanning technology and being able to look at planets many lightyears away that its really odd we haven't found anything yet?
There are approximately 10^80 atoms in the visible universe. To put this in perspective, the bitcoin blockchain has about 1/1000th as many in its private key space (2^256 is an unfathomably large number which is 10^77 in decimal).