"My God, its full of stars!"

Sometimes when I look at a picture of the ocean I see no signs of life...

Yet I know that every drop is swarming with life forms beyond counting and amazing beyond my understanding.

I feel the same way when I look into the night sky.

I made this. Here's the music coupled with the properly inportany subject matter.

www.youtube.com...

Hello all,

I am new to this site and forums but wanted to add this link to a video which I'm sure has been posted on this site but I find it to be one of the best "scale of the universe" videos out there:

www.youtube.com...

I do not have 20 posts yet so I can not post a new thread so while I'm posting this thought I'd inquire:

The Kepler mission is looking in a section of stars that are fairly far away from Earth - 300 light years or so. Well now they are saying basically every star has at least 1 planet. So what about all of the stars you can see with the naked eye, which in a rural area away from light pollution is in the thousands? I'm just surprised they do not seem to mention "nearby" exoplanets. Any thoughts on this?

Thank you!

When we ponder the beginning, we can lose our way. Believing in something provides guidance so that one is no longer lost.

reply to post by HomerinNC


Most of these pictures are artists renditions of what they "think" the universe looks like right? I mean you can't just take pictures of multiple galaxies in one photo frame?

reply to post by usfighterNH


For those of you with Ipads, there is an app called "exoplanet" (or something close). Its is a great catalog of all the exoplanets so far discovered with lots of amazing information/graphics and it updates with each new discovery. I highly reccomend it.

I doubt interstellar, and especially intergalactic, travel is possible. It's just not practical to fly that far. You would need the capability to fly literally hundreds of thousands up to even millions of times faster than light in order to make any practical trips across space. The only other method of deep space travel would be "wormholes" or "stargates", both of which are purely theoretical.

There are two semi-likely processes from popular media which may exist in a highly advanced culture.

1) This is actually in the film "2001". It involves sending self-replicating probes in every direction in space to land on every planet. This would be useful for an advanced culture to learn where life may evolve or where it already has evolved, for future reference.

2) This is from the unsuccessful, yet highly entertaining series "Stargate Universe". The "ancients", as they call them, built a group of smart ships known as "Seed Ships" which travel FTL across space, plotting a path to the most useful planets and building/dropping stargates in their vicinity. These ships recharge in stars, so they never run out of power out in space to be left as floating junk. Once a stargate is built on/near a planet, it can be used to instantly travel between other stargates within a certain stellar range. While the physics surrounding things like "stargates" are speculative and not even a theoretical science, yet, if possible, this would be the most plausible way for interstellar travel.

However, I tend to agree with Stephen Hawking on ETs. We should probably keep to ourselves and pretend we aren't here.

reply to post by HomerinNC


Great post!!. I agree with you, there is no way that we are the only one's. There might be million's of other life form's, and better yet maybe million's of life form's with as much intellect as us or much more advanced than us. I wish we as a whole on earth would put our differences aside and look out side the box and try to find our cosmic brother's and sister's(if we have not found them already:@@.

reply to post by InsideYourMind


My thoughts exactly. Ok, check this out. The last Ice age ended about 10 000 years ago. That's pretty much when man invented the wheel , right? How come we have stuctures that are way more technologicly advanced than what those men were capable of. My thought are that before the last Ice age we were technologicly advance and those who invented the wheel were remnance of a past civilization. 90% of the human race perrished. We rebuilt everything but lost all the knowledge of the past. Now, think that somewhere out there there is a planet that never went through a major natural disaster. Let's say that that planet is only 500 000 years older than earth which is a blink of an eye in cosmetological terms. But in human terms that's 50 human civilizations. Now, lets say they never stopped learning and never lost the lessons of the passed.
Mind blown?

reply to post by HomerinNC


Excellent, thank you for the reminder of the awesomeness of our universe.

To me, it's evident that there is abundant life in the universe. Probably so much that the amount is inconceivable, just like the size of the universe is. That's just a logical conclusion.

Having said that, my main question is: If there are millions or billions of civilizations, then there must be many that are far more advanced, and interesting, than ours is. So why would those who have managed interstellar travel be visiting US, and not all the other civilizations that have found more creative ways of living? What would they learn from us? Or would they be watching us as a reminder of how it's NOT done?

We are going to have to figure it out for ourselves. If we want to PLAY big league, we need to ACT big league.

Good luck to us all!

Originally posted by HomerinNC
Thanks for the responses guys!
Anyhow, there is one picture that really stirred my imagination many many years ago, to show you how lonely our universe is

for some reason, the Derelict from Alien really makes me think that out there there ARe other civilizations, ruins, derelicts etc

Have you seen this?

www.youtube.com...

I cannot wait! That whole segment on LV-426 is something that is etched in my mind from childhood. Truly alien...

reply to post by HomerinNC


All reproductions of the torus. You even see it when you flush the toilet. You see it as atomic, as life is born, as the solar system, galaxies, on and on. The secret to life, creation, free energy, anti gravity, everything.

I agree with what everyone here has said so far, in that the universe is unfathomably large and just as awe inspiring. One guy on here said that even if we could visit every planet every second, it would take 12,000 years. I thought that was mind blowing, and it got me thinking.

While there may be more stars in the universe than grains of sand on earth, that is only what we see. Given their distance, and the speed of light, much of what we see isn't even there anymore. Most of it has been gone for millions and billions of years. On the other end of the spectrum, we can't even see newer planets and stars.

When we see these pictures, if there was intelligent life, we have to realize we are seeing species that have been utterly and totally erased. When we find a planet millions of light years away that could harbor life, aren't we seeing it as it was millions of years ago?

And just think...

Studies show that most stars/suns have planets around them...

Exoplanets are around most stars, study suggests

Originally posted by randomname
you can't look at these pictures and not believe in God.

Funny, I was going to say the exact opposite.

reply to post by HomerinNC


I regards of the third image... isn't that someone waving just on the right?

Great images.

Originally posted by ButterCookie

Originally posted by randomname
you can't look at these pictures and not believe in God.

Actually, its quite the opposite.

How can a person think that the same thing that created all the stars, galaxies, etc. be the same person that cannot heal the sick, stop wars, and defeat the 'devil'?

edit on 22-1-2012 by ButterCookie because: (no reason given)

How can anyone see all that was created and then question the creator? Do you have the wisdom to create all that is seen? Maybe what you see here is for your own good. God created us with a mortal body and immortal spirit that only he can destroy. Do you not consider there is a purpose for what we experience in our mortal bodies that make perfect our immortal spirits?

You can continue to question what God can and cannot do, and you can continue to believe that you have more wisdom than the creator, but I will continue to put my faith in God. The one who created all that we see has already proven to you and me that his wisdom far surpasses ours, so his plan must far surpass anything that we can conceive.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse (Romans 1:19, 20).

Scripture says that God's existence is evident to everyone. So I know that when you say there is no God that you are trying to justify your life and convince yourself. God has told me this so I know that I do not need to argue this point with you. Continue to fight what you know is true or accept it and learn how to have a relationship with a God that loves you.

reply to post by soulwaxer


Maybe they visit us because they visit everyone...

Perhaps the world of science reaches an end. At some point you know all that you can know. Maybe at that point the only thing to do is visit other worlds and see new art, new struggles and enjoy the universe through the eyes of a primitive. Maybe the more advanced we get, the more like everyone else we become. Boring.

Originally posted by IEtherianSoul9
reply to post by HomerinNC

 

Amazing post. We both have similar ideals. The immense vastness of this universe is unfathomable to the human mind. All the stars in the expanding universe are comparable to all the grains of sand on the Earth! Our knowledge of this universe is so infinitesimal, yet some of us still hold an anthropocentric view as if humans are the pinnacle of creation.

S&F

Lacking ANY evidence to the contrary, the anthropocentric view is EXACTLY as reasonable (and probable) as any other.

Inverting your "grains of sand" reasoning, we have yet to find evidence of intelligent life on one single grain of sand. That there are so many of them (grains of sand, stars, planets) does not point to a conclusion about the rarity or the commonality of intelligent life.

At best, the abundance of stars merely allows for hope that there might be intelligent life.

In the vast scale of time by our reckoning, it may be that in a few billion years intelligent life will be abundant and lost in legend and ancient religious beliefs will be the concept that a space-faring life-form ventured out into an otherwise sterile universe from some mythical planet called Earth.