And some people think we're all alone

[BinCo]

Here is a good video that put's our tiny little planet and lives into a bigger perspective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgg2tpUVbXQ

It's a wonder that some people still cling to the "we are created in God's image and are alone in the universe" mantra.

Makes me think of Monty Python

[BinCo]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

Thinking of Monty Python. Let's have a little more humor in this world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtd...eature=related

[Guest]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

Here is a good video that put's our tiny little planet and lives into a bigger perspective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgg2tpUVbXQ

It's a wonder that some people still cling to the "we are created in God's image and are alone in the universe" mantra.

Thanks for posting, Bin -- very thought-provoking!

[bbime]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

What an awesome illustation of the size of our planet to the sun,planet,stars!
Amazing!shocked Where did you find the photos comparisons? I love to learn about astronomy.

[Fitz1980]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

I always liked that line from Apollo 13, when the news men are trying to explain the distances and the exacting coordinates that the astronauts have to hit in on the way back from the moon. The guy pulls out a standard sized baseball & basketball and says

"if this baseball represents the Moon and this basketball represents the Earth and you placed them 17 feet away the astronauts would have to hit a target no wider than this sheet of paper in order to not either burn up on reentry or skip out of the atmosphere."

In most models of the solar system the moons are right next to the planets and the planets are near by each other. In reality you're talking about sizes and distances that humans can't even comprehend. We think it's a long journey to drive from Atlanta to Miami or to fly to France from New York. But than we think that the moon is right there, or Mars is only the next planet over, talking about distances that we can't even comprehend.

[Baron Lake]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

The relative scale of Earth/basketball and Moon/baseball aside if you assume a basketball
is about 1 foot in diameter and the distance to the Moon is about 240,000 miles then shouldn't the basketball and baseball be about 60 feet apart? Plus, the "paper" is a
moving target ya can't even aim at, gotta figure out where it WILL be. Is there an astronomer in the house?


b.l.

[nimrod]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

Makes me wonder is those deep space photos are actually photos of our own galaxy. Light can be bent and warped by gravity can we look out far enough to be able to see ourselves because of all those warps and bends? I believe it was Einstien that theroised that if you set out into space in a strait line, barring any mishaps like hitting a star or another planet you would eventually end up where you started because of the pull of gravatational forces.

[Wolfboy]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

I always think about things like this when i watch the stars at night or when i'm daydreaming...
Is the Universe endless? Does it have boundaries? If so, what's beyond the boundaries?
Fascinating!

[luvnaturism]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

It's a wonder that some people still cling to the "we are created in God's image and are alone in the universe" mantra.

Lots of people who believe that we are created in the image of God don't "cling" to the idea that we're alone in the universe. The two ideas have no necessary connection to each other.

Thanks for starting an interesting thread.

[meredith2kp4]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

You don't have to read much of the Old Testament to realize that Man made God in Man's image. An unfortunate aspect of this is that the God of the earlier books of the Old Testament was made in the image of a brutal tribal despot.

[Arnabas]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

Amazing.

I have seen videos like this before. I'll post a link when I have a bit more time. But in all of creation, there is nothing else exactly like earth... I accept that there is likely life elsewhere, I am the only me and you all are the only Yous. And yet, we are so willing to toss it all away as we slowly destroy this lovely planet of ours.

[Skinview]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

The relative scale of Earth/basketball and Moon/baseball aside if you assume a basketball
is about 1 foot in diameter and the distance to the Moon is about 240,000 miles then shouldn't the basketball and baseball be about 60 feet apart? Plus, the "paper" is a
moving target ya can't even aim at, gotta figure out where it WILL be. Is there an astronomer in the house?

Ok, this easy enough for a geologist to figure out. The Earth is 7,926 miles in diameter, so multiply that by 5,280ft/mile = 41,849,280 feet in diameter. The distance to the Moon is 238,855 miles, on average, or 1,261,392,000 feet. If the scale is 1 foot to 41,849,280 feet, then divide 1,261,392,000 by 41,849,280 to get aproximatly 30 feet to the Moon. Assuming I didn't screw up my decimal placements.

[Skinview]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

Makes me wonder is those deep space photos are actually photos of our own galaxy. Light can be bent and warped by gravity can we look out far enough to be able to see ourselves because of all those warps and bends? I believe it was Einstien that theroised that if you set out into space in a strait line, barring any mishaps like hitting a star or another planet you would eventually end up where you started because of the pull of gravatational forces.

I don't think the universe is old enough for light to have made the round trip, even if there is enough mass to bend the light back, and there doesn't seem to be enough mass.

Keep in mind another neat thing about those photos: You are also lookng back in time, to when the universe was very young, billions of years ago. The light started on its trip long before the Earth even existed.

[Fitz1980]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

Lots of people who believe that we are created in the image of God don't "cling" to the idea that we're alone in the universe. The two ideas have no necessary connection to each other.

Some do. I know of a Christian movie review site that claims that their interpretation of the bible is that all of creation was created by God for humanity; meaning that stars and planets on a scale that we can't imagine were just for our benefit as God created it all for humanity. For any sci-fi movie that features aliens they always list the existence of aliens as objectionable material since they believe that the bible precludes such things from existing.

[richo]

Re: And some people think we're all alone

On a somewhat related note to "life out there":

The milky way (our galaxy) is about 100,000 lightyears across and 1,000 lightyears thick. This tells us that the volume of space it occupies is roughly 7.8 trillion cubic lightyears. If we assume the high-end estimate of 400 billion stars, that means there are an average of 1 star per 19 cubic lightyears. This isn't really accurate, since stellar density is far higher in the center of the galaxy than at the edges; out by us, the actual density is closer to 2300 cubic lightyears per star.

If we assume that radio waves have been broadcasting from Earth in some form since around 1880, then those signals fill a volume of space of approximately 9.2 million cubic lightyears. That means our radio broadcasts have reached less than 4,000 stars and just over 0.0001% of the galaxy. Needless to say, the odds that any of the planets near us could support life, much less *do* support life that could notice our broadcasts, is pretty low: conservative estimates put it at one in a million for potential, much less actual, life. So, 4000 out of a million means there's less than 0.4% chance that a planet within our "bubble" of broadcasts has anything to notice us, much less that it *would* notice us and have the capability to stop by. And that's assuming the best-case scenarios.

That being said, we've only just scratched the surface of the galaxy as a whole.