SETI--
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Our sun is regarded as fairly "puny" as stars go and there are billions and billions of stars (sound like Carl Sagan?) in our Milky Way Galaxy alone. Each one of those suns (stars) has an habitable zone capable, perchance, of supporting life as we know it.
Therefore, in our galaxy alone, the odds are astoundingly high there would be other planets somewhere in those countless zones--like this newly discovered one.
Then, consider, there are billions and billions of galaxies in the universe. That compounds, exponentially (beyond human comprehension actually) the odds of there being intelligent life somewhere out there.
Then, consider, the cosmos which includes us and everything beyond the known universe. Sagan described the cosmos as "...everything that has been, is now, or ever will be".
Actually pondering this makes two things happen to me; 1) I feel quite puny myself, and 2) my head hurts.
...and, I have not even begun to wrestle with the meaning of "intelligence".
Also, there is the matter of distance. The Milky Way Galaxy is, itself, a fairly large neighborhood. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. Remember, a light-year measures distance and space, not time. It is the distance light travels in a year at a speed of about 186,000 miles per second.
Now, imagine traveling at that velocity for 100,000 years just to cross our own Milky Way neighborhood.
After that little jaunt you can begin to consider visiting our nearest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda. It is a mere two and a quarter million light years, more or less, away.
Humans certainly are going to have to speed-up our means of locomotion if we ever hope to have eye contact with any of our galactic neighbors.
Unless, of course, they arrive here first. In that case, we might learn a new definition of the word "intelligence".
No comments:
Post a Comment