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

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 :tongue: )

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. :wink:

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 :wink: …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 :tongue:

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 :smile:
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 :yes:

Why would you compare our universe to a creation of a human beings, such as a number?

Numbers are really just descriptions of things which already exist anyway, plus, they can give us an idea of how big or small or fast something is, etc. That’s how I see it anyway.

The universe may indeed be gigantic but so are we. Imagine you were hydrogen nucleus saying exactly the same thing about a human being.

First there’s the electrons which are tiny but very far away from the nucleus, then then there’s an oxygen atom conjoined with this hydrogen atom and another hydrogen atom on the other side of that. Then, there is a HUGE number of this H20 molecules that make up a human being. I just wish I still knew mass conversions; I’d be able to give you a relatively accurate number of water molecules within the average human body.
My point is that we are immensely huge structures of particles. Trillions of them. Yes, we may be tiny in comparison to the universe, but we are gigantic compared to the atoms and molecules which make up the universe. It all depends from what angle you look at it all.

Interesting fact here:
The base molecular structure for life on Earth is just one combination of the atoms which make it up. There are actually more combinations possible of those particles than there are electrons in the visible universe. That’s a pretty massive number. So you could say it’s unlikely that we’re alone, but is it really? We don’t know enough about what is required for life to answer that question just yet.

Conclusion:
We are both immensely huge 4(+)dimensional structures and tiny, insignificant little specs within the greater universe. We may not be alone in the universe but it is as equally plausible as there being other life out there similar to us.
If we are the only self aware entities in the universe, that’s a whole lot of universe for seemingly nothing. But without awareness in the universe, it would be as insignificant as we are. If a universe exists without life, does it? (A variation of “If a tree falls in the forest…”)

Could’ve explained a lot of that quite a bit better, I think, but I haven’t got my brain in gear today. I love this topic, though; I spend far too much time thinking about the universe.

Two final things to mention:
String theory and the multiverse.

Vibrating strings could be the things that create the fundamental particles of our universe. I like this because it almost means that we and everything in the universe are grand symphonies performed by the enormous string orchestra of the universe.

Our universe may be one of many within a multiverse. There may be parallel universes for every decision we make and for every event where more than one outcome is possible. That means for every event throughout all of time there could’ve been a huge amount of universes created and, of course, that still continues to happen (if the many-worlds theory is true).
Many worlds would definately confirm that there is other life out there. First, there would be other versions of ourselves and then there’s bound to be other universes containing different life. It would even be the case that there’d be universes with no life at all. An ENTIRE UNIVERSE with noone to witness it. To me that seems like a waste which is why I enjoy thoughts about predeterminism rather than the many-worlds theory.
If there were many worlds, why am I this version of me and not another? Are we all aware, in which case does consciousness divide, or does my conscious mind choose a certain path through the multiverse?

At school, we went on a field trip to a Space Station. They said that the astronauts will start making a small civilization on the moon, conducting experiments and stuff.

They showed a CGI movie where there was a giant bubble thing, and some small buildings. I think it would only five or six people living there, probably only a month at a time…

But, I think it will be about 20 years until they actually start this…

i think its funny how we are so excited about colonizing our moon. Although it is a big leap for us, its just our moon

Why shouldn’t we be excited? If we do put a colony on the moon it will be the first group of people to live on another world (for lack of a better word). It’s quite a massive leap.
Also I feel that if the moon were aware of your remarks, it would be insulted having been called “JUST our moon”. It may be just our moon to you but the moon is responsible for a lot on our planet. The tides and waves, movements within the atmosphere. It’s even partially responsible for all life on Earth. It’s done a lot for us and it continues to do much for us so I think it deserves a little more respect.

I don’t know a lot more about our moon but I know we definately should be excited about putting our first colony of people up there. It is “just” our moon, yes, but we’re not exactly so advanced that it shouldn’t be exciting. Maybe in a thousand years when we’re sending our first mission to another solar system it won’t be so impressive but at the time being it’s a major forthcoming event.

And beyond visiting other stars and even galaxies, perhaps one day we’ll be visiting other universes. Maybe even then there will be someone who says, “I think its funny how we are so excited about visiting another universe. Although it is a big leap for us, its just another universe.”
I have no idea what could possibly make the thought of visiting another universe seem unimpressive but such a thing could exist. Maybe we’ll discover negative-universes or perhaps there will be something larger than the multiverse… Multi-multiverse? … Negative-poly-multiverse? … Super-negative-poly-multiverse?? A supernegapolymultiverse. :eek:

No matter how advanced we get, I doubt the human race will ever become so technologically superior so that we can break the natural laws of the universe, (nothing can travel past the speed of light).

Even if we could go near the speed of light, after merely a day of traveling at those speeds, time would have passed by so quickly that Earth probably wouldn’t even still exist!!

Yet people still try to design machines with perpetual motion and people still believe we may be able to achieve cold fusion. I think that maybe one day we will find a way to break the speed of light. Perhaps not in the classical sense of travelling through space-time at a certain speed but by finding a way to harness the potential of strings. Is it not possible that if we crack string theory we could use the principle of entanglement (with great difficulty) to travel from one point in space-time to another instantaneously*?

  • Potentially (if my logic isn’t greatly flawed) this could send us to any point in time as well as space as they are both part of the same thing, space-time. Although the traveller would experience the journey instantaneously an exterior observer may have to wait or they could even witness the traveller arrive before they even depart. Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking: “PARADOX!!!” But that’s not neccesarily true. Depending on the nature of time, there are ways in which this could happen without being paradoxical.

Huge, my definition of it changed when i read up on something i had not heard of before, the Virgo SuperCluster after that i realised just how inconcievably huge this universe is.