The galaxy- hard to wrap your mind around? Try the Universe!

So I’m on this topic of universe and galaxies and stuff lately, and had no idea that there was so much stuff! I went on Wikipedia, and on our extrasolar group, our solar system and systems around it, there are 216 planets. our extrasolar group is about 1/500 of our galaxy, and there are billions of galaxies in the universe!!!

It’s actually really fun to think about.

What if you went to a far off galaxy and talked to an alien species. Lets say he asked you where you lived. Look at these ratios:

Telling him you lived on Earth would be like telling a guy who lived in Moscow that you lived on Maple Street (or watever happens to be the street you live on)

Even more, telling him you lived inside the Kuiper belt, our sun and planets, we be like telling the guy in moscow you lived in Dimlake (or watever town you live in)

Finally, telling him you lived in the Milky way, would be like telling the moscow guy you lived in the USA.

Now think about this

if you talked to an alien outside our local group (remember, the group comprises over 30 galaxies) that was one of the BILLIONS of galaxies, telling the alien you lived in the milky way, would be like telling him “i live in my bedroom upstairs”

I never realized the Universe was so HUGE!!

Any people who say theres no aliens, read above and holy crap, the chance of no aliens is rolling a dice with trillions of billions of sides, and having it land on the number 1.

Finally, I can’t wait till we get to travel to different galaxies, think of all the exploring!

There are aliens

They are just not going to visit us

Thats all what i have to say to this …

I wonder if anyone has thought about this: Why everyone thinks that aliens are superior to us by technology or something similar?
I have thought that aliens might be technologically inferior to us, like being in stone age or middle age.
Just a thought.

Yes. Also, why would aliens have to even remotely resemble anything from our planet? Or even remotely require similar living constraints? Perhaps life is in fact as close as our solar system - we’re just too accustomed to living conditions on our planet to fathom an entirely new form of the aspect.

It’s very likely that most aliens aren’t just technologically inferior to us, but that they have no technology because they are just plants or microbes of some sort
In fact as Angstyboy just said, scientists haven’t even given up on the search for life in our solar system; there may be life which once lived on Mars when it was a lot warmer and had running water (that was a long time ago). Or, maybe there is life on some of the larger moons of Jupiter, or Saturn’s moon Titan? Granted they might be ‘simple’ lifeforms, something that looks like a microbe or a tube worm, but it’s extraterrestrial life nonetheless.

The universe is a big place after all

The aliens would probably have different names for our galaxies and others. So it would be hard to communicate with them about where you came from. I watched that show you told me to watch couple nights ago. It was interesting like that one star where its light sources was rotating like a lighthouse. That one was pretty cool but if I were to live on that planet…gah that light would tick me off within two minutes.

Why does everyone say that aliens are inferior or superior. as someone else said, the universe is HUGE!! theres got to be giant empires, planets like ours, AND planets with micro organisms or dinosaurs. I am not saying they are all bigger, just that those would be the most prominent. Whoever created the universe, should have thought twice about making it such huge, why make it so hard to find other life?

Maybe they don’t talk, maybe they don’t have communication? Maybe we only have those things.

obviously you will never get the chance to do that, not in this life…
and weather or not the human race lives long enough to do it (again) is another question!

I always figure that the first find of alien life we have will be some kind of bacteria or single-celled organisms. I think there are aliens of a higher level of intelligence than us, but those are probably more rare.

I always find it strange that scientists will look for water on other planets as a sign of life. We can’t really assume that just because everything on our planet needs water to live that other planets would have species that need it too.

I would just focus on traveling space to meet aliens in your dreams for now, galaxy traveling is impossible, as of my current understanding. We would first have to be able to travel at lightspeed, even then the spaceship would probably expand and then eventually explode. Even if we found a way to travel lightspeed without getting our atoms expanded lol, it would still take what, 500 lightyears? We would have to reproduce on the spaceship farming, growing some type of fuel to fuel our lightspeed trip, some type of sanetery water supply, teach the children all they need to know, plus have them agree and cooperate. Not even that, some galaxies are lik 500million lightyears away! O_O Your right, the Universe is big, too big to travel for us. We are lucky if we can get to Mars.

As for loopholes in space, they exist. However going into one, you could very well end up anywhere in space or time. God only knows if you would even return back to your time on Earth, or if 1000 years has passed when you only left for what seemed 10 minutes. Not to even mention, the loophole would most likely close right back up after you exited to the other side, it may even trap you inside it ultimately killing you.

Another thing to worry about is black holes, comets, planets, all while rushing forward at lightspeed. Also you would need to make sure you had some type of gravity machine so that everyone wouldn’t fly out the windshield going that fast.

Lastly, we need the funds to support such a meaningless venture. Also we need some loon to volunteer basically his life in space, never to return home, willing also to reproduce with another lady astronaut. How would we keep communication? Once they got to another galaxy, what then? Our astronauts die off, unless (God forbid) they mate with cringe aliens… Even if we find life. Good luck with all that. xD

If we even do travel farther than the end of our solar system, it will be a long long way off. Anyone dreaming this should stop lol. Like I said, maybe in your lucids.

I am no nerd by the way, I just watch a lot of “The Universe”, I love that show. =D

I don’t think that this is the case. In science fiction (as with those who talk of Alien abduction) the aliens generally have to be more technologically advanced, otherwise how the heck would they have got to Earth in the first place!

It’s logical to assume that any reasonably advanced species will have communication, whether it would be compatible with our own methods is the real question. Look at the animals on our own planet, the range of communication methods is vast, from squids that change colour to convey messages to bees dancing to the pheremone communication employed by many species.

This is a good point, the reason scientists look for water is because it is pretty much essential for carbon based lifeforms, since we have never experienced any life that is not carbon based it is often difficult for people to imagine anything else. This is often called carbon chauvinism. There is no reason to assume that other elements cannot form the complex molecule set ups required for life (silicon, for example)

Victor Stenger goes one step further to say that this assumption in itself is molecular chauvinism: Who says life even needs a molecular base?

[i]edit: quick side note, to inker: Lightyears is a measure of distance, not time, it’s the distance that light travels in one year. Therefore travelling at C it would take five hundred years to travel five hundred lightyears. But traveling at C you’d be squished all over the inside of the ship long before you got there!

Also, with regards to producing your own fuel you’d pretty much have to lash a hydrogen rich gas giant to the back of the ship (maybe you could keep it in the universe biggest U-haul )

You’re right, we should stick to trying to get to mars![/i]

That’s right. In fact scientists might also look for other things which could possibly give rise to life. Rather than carbon or liquid water, maybe life has formed from silicon or liquid methane?

But, the reason scientists are so hopeful about finding carbon based lifeforms that depend on water is because of the versatility of those two substances. Carbon, for example, can bond with other elements in lost of different ways (that’s why you find it in so many places, everything from life to plastic, to gasoline, to pesticides), and water stays liquid over a large temperature range, making it a very good ‘solvent’ for life to get started in.

A lightyear is a measurement of distance, they distance that light can travel in one year.

One thing to think about, especially on a lucid dreaming forum … maybe the best way to communicate with beings on other planets and from different galaxies is in the lucid dreaming state. Has anyone really tried to create a controlled experiment that looks into this?

yawn The universe is fairly small. Try Graham’s number. Or infinity.

Lleu, we are in one planet. We have yet to live on ONE other planet. It takes a month to cross our own planet. There are billions of planets in our galaxy. There are trillions of galaxies. Fuck infinite. Check our map. Then tell me its small

Infinity isn’t a number, more of an adjective …there are things which may be infinite but there is no number that is infinity.
but you’ve got to admit, we are beyond microscopic even in comparison to the ‘fairly small’ universe

Yes, off course, there’s all that hugeness…

But if you try to write Graham’s number the digits themselves will fill up the known universe more than twice over (assuming an 8 pt. font, I think). In scientific notation, it spans the diameter of the known universe.

And it’s just as far from infinity as one is.

Though, to us, the Earth, or even our galaxy, the universe in unarguably large, compared to some numbers, it’s tiny.

Bah. Concept, number, don’t bother me with details.
Nevertheless, it is too big to wrap your mind around, and I never said it was a number.

You’re right
Hey, this sort of reminds me of one of the episodes of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. Has anyone watched that series? Best programme about the universe I’ve seen