The Truth Is (Finally) Out There

[Fred588]

The math exercise is interesting but I prefer to think of it this way: Given the stupendous size of our galaxy, never mind the universe itself, the very idea that there is no other sentient life out there is utterly absurd.

[SinkerCutie]

We may be the only sentient beings in the universe, but I highly doubt it. I wouldn't be surprised either way.

[Fred588]

We may be the only sentient beings in the universe, but I highly doubt it. I wouldn't be surprised either way.

Actually, there are two kinds of sentient beings on Earth; humans and cats. The actual intelligence of the humans is questionable, but most cats have far more sense. They are able to get the humans to provide them with shelter, food, and to open doors, and all they have to do in return is to be cute and chase a ping pong ball once in a while. Humans are easily entertained. They have the common sense to come inside when it rains or is cold.

[Duncan Edwards]

We may be the only sentient beings in the universe, but I highly doubt it. I wouldn't be surprised either way.

Actually, there are two kinds of sentient beings on Earth; humans and cats. The actual intelligence of the humans is questionable, but most cats have far more sense. They are able to get the humans to provide them with shelter, food, and to open doors, and all they have to do in return is to be cute and chase a ping pong ball once in a while. Humans are easily entertained. They have the common sense to come inside when it rains or is cold.

It's true. Cats can not only survive under most any situation, they can make humans do all of it for them. I would not be surprised to find a competing race of felines out there someday.

There's a lot of famous "guesses" at the number of intelligent worlds out there like The Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation. Truth is that no matter how educated, they are still guesses at best. I have an app on my iPhone and I love to hear the distinctive ding it makes every time a new group of exoplanets, worlds beyond our solar system, are confirmed. Right now it stands at over 5,000 confirmed planets with thousands more awaiting confirmation and millions more awaiting discovery. Based on statistical samples from what we currently know there could easily be more earth like rocky worlds out there than there are people on earth right now. And that's just in this galaxy. Each of the 100-400 Billion stars in this galaxy has planets and many of those planets are so huge they are likely to have very large moons that might be habitable as well. That's hundreds of billions to trillions of worlds out there. And that's just in our little galaxy among hundreds of billions more. We can't even begin...

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[Mynock]

Conclusion: Somebody really needs to get going on inventing a Hyperdrive. Or a Wormhole generator. I'm not good with Physics but one thing Science fact has in common with Science Fiction is that it's possible to "cheat" FTL travel by traveling interdimensionally.

[TK421]

Conclusion: Somebody really needs to get going on inventing a Hyperdrive. Or a Wormhole generator. I'm not good with Physics but one thing Science fact has in common with Science Fiction is that it's possible to "cheat" FTL travel by traveling interdimensionally.

If I recall, The Event Horizon tried it. It didn’t work out too well for the crew

[Mynock]

Conclusion: Somebody really needs to get going on inventing a Hyperdrive. Or a Wormhole generator. I'm not good with Physics but one thing Science fact has in common with Science Fiction is that it's possible to "cheat" FTL travel by traveling interdimensionally.

If I recall, The Event Horizon tried it. It didn’t work out too well for the crew

Yea it probably would help if the dimension you're short cutting though isn't, you know, Hell itself.

Makes me think....Stephen King wrote an excellent short story called "The Jaunt" about teleportation. People could instantly teleport between one "Jaunt" station and another, but they had to go though the portal sedated because what happened almost instantaneously in this universe was like a thousand years in the one you passed through. Ifyou went through the portal awake you came out the other side batshit insane from what seemed to you like a thousand years of total sensory deprivation.

[PA Jack]

That was a great short story by Stephen King. “Longer than you think, Dad … longer than you think.”

[BogDog]

Even if life has a billion-billion chance of starting on another world, there are billions of galaxies out there,each with billions of stars that have planets around them.

I believe there may be life elsewhere, but it's so far away that we will never know. If the universe was created then that may be the intend. Prevent cross-contamination of developing species with unimaginable distances and laws of physics that prevent faster than light travel.

Otherwise, if we are all there is then that's a lot of wasted real estate out there that God created.

[Duncan Edwards]

Well if you want to complete the vastly humbling experience of thinking we are special, there's always Carl Sagan. Either we really are the most amazing thing in all the billions of years of creation or we're nothing special at all. What's amazing is how everything known to us took place in a thin layer of air around a small rock, a speck of dust really, and how we don't even get the joke about how cosmically insignificant or alone we might be.

This photo of earth taken from Voyager 2 looking back over it's shoulder as it headed out of the solar system puts things in perspective.

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