The answer to life, universe and everything?

[hienvn94]

How our world was created, is based on many theories. I'd like to stick to the theory that there came beings from another planet to ours. Maybe these beings knew they were headed here or maybe they crash landed? What if molecules from them got into ours waters and after time, plants started to grow?

Who can say otherwise? These are just mere theories and we cannot know for sure what actually happened?

I very much dislike people who say that there is no other life in the universe. That cannot be. Try to think about how incredibly vast the universe is, and to think we (in this galaxy out of several gazillions) are the only ones, is just.. is just.. it doesn't make any sense.

Black holes, they are created when a star grows so big it implodes (in the end of it's "life"), right? What happened if one it sucked into it? Do you die? Is a black hole a big hole of nothing? Vacuum? 

Does the Universe have an end? Is it a physical end or what? Can you pass it somehow? What happens if you did pass it, what's behind there? 

What does 42 actually mean? Google says it's the answer to life, the universe and everything, but why a number? And why 42?


There are just questions I've been thinking about the past months. It all, say, intrigues me.

[Guest]

Try reading some Stephen Hawking books. Most of the answers to your questions will be found in there - apart from the question about the number 42 - the answer to that is in another book

[slash's hat]

This sort of thing really interests me too, but I just get baffled when trying to read about it. Way beyond me. 

[feral chile]

Me too.

The thing about life on other planets - we have to factor in the vastness of time as well as space, and the odds of life coexisting in the same time frame.

Also, would we recognise life if it evolved differently? Would very different life forms be able to relate to each other and communicate?

I've always thought I could never believe in God because of how the concept is presented, supernatural, faith, rather than empirical. And the whole worship and blind trust thing.

But an egocentric, terraforming, alien geneticist would be something else.

Edited May 8, 2018 by feral chile

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

This whole area blows my mind. Is the human mind even capable of understanding?  Maybe our efforts at trying to explain via physics and astronomy etc are laughable in the face of the reality. They say time will tell, but will it?

Anyway, here's something (you've probably seen before) to pass a bit of that time for you (or will it?);

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

 

[feral chile]

And when you think of our sensory limitations, we can only conceive of what our brains interpret via our senses.

And time. What the hell is it? Is it a thing, a relation between events - what???

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

39 minutes ago, feral chile said:

And time. What the hell is it? Is it a thing, a relation between events - what???

Only Dr Who can answer that question. Or maybe he / she can't. Maybe there's not enough time in the human life to be taught. Maybe we ourselves are time - both individually, and / or as a collective. Time's mental. 

 

[feral chile]