space and the undiscovered

what do u think about far beyond our solar system?

i was watching the empire strikes back last night and thought about when they were flying through the meteor storm where do these rocks come from? a planet that exploded?

also it is funny how our sense of direction is understood through an axis perceived 2 be more vertical than horizontal

i am interested in hearing personal views and not so much from internet research

The asteroid belt is supposed to be the remains of a planet that never formed properly.

“our sense of direction is understood through an axis perceived 2 be more vertical than horizontal”
That so?

As a teen I used to be very interested in astronomy until one day I got freaked out thinking about the size of the universe. I stayed in bed for hours panicked. Then I got into politics,girls and movies and never thought much about it.

dp

@Francisco J. Torres: That’s absolutely hilarious, I love your story!

In any case Like2Sleep, there are somewhere between three and an infinate number of dimensions (it depends on if you want to follow the Standard Theory based on Eisensteinian relativity or String Theory, which is itself divided on the question. String Theory accounts for 4,5,8,12,13 or infinate dimensions). In any, any case, there may even be a tenth (alright, ninth now that Pluto is no longer counted) planet somewhere in our solar system with an orbit of something like 10.000 years. There is a lot to earn, even close to home. In any, any, any case, we are still discovering several species of life in our oceans every year. Why not start there?

francisco about the axis… when we see earth from outer space like in the animation above we are always seeing an image using a perceived north and south and that influences our thoughts about directions in space

i wonder if there is a boundary somewhere far out there? and what gravity-like forces are moving meteors

anonymouse u can tell me views from your own imagination because there must be unrealized thoughts that make the unknown possible

if i see at animation above,it think the dimension of universe its like unlimited
its hard to tell what kind of the dimension of universe
one thing was confused me its, where the limit the universe?
if universe have limit,what its the thing on out side of the limit?

I think you’ll all like this one. I certainly do.

I may be behind on String Theory a bit (it is modified often, or new theories like M Theory spring off of it), but I remember reading about the possibility of extra dimensions and how our universe may be a finite, defined space, a bubble floating around in some other kind of space amongst other universes. According to the math, whenever two of these universes bumped up against one another, a Big Bang occurred, and a new universe was born.

It’s all theoretical but I’m fascinated by physics.

As a teen i believed in infinite possibility, the possibility of any number of universes, and within them any number of alternatives and variations on our own history. Could i exist elsewhere or variations on me? Of course maybe there’s just one universe and given its size surely there must be intelligent life out there, even if nothing close in terms of how far we can travel in a lifetime at high speed. So probably all sorts of aliens, but due to distance less likely that they’ve been visiting us, unless they are super advanced for travel speed or live an extremely long time. Will we destroy our planet before we become space travellers in a wondrous destiny? Is indefinite life expectancy almost with us? If so what problems and conflicts as well as changes will arise? Will organised religions then be so quick to believe in a better after life? And could death be some sort of gateway, or terrible oblivion without ever having known the meaning of the universe?

miasma – i was listening to the radio while watching your video and ziggy stardust came on. hahah.

yea, we are pretty insignificant.

@Kenji – Heavy stuff. I think the big question is whether or not one believes in infinitude, or finitude. If one has an allegiance, that is.

@Mary – Yay :) That’s one way of looking at it. To a quark, we are pretty damned significant. I really love that video. Endlessly mind-blowing.

@House of Leaves: Yes, I think the most recent work on String Theory (or The Theory of Everything, if you like) is that there is an infinite number or dimensions that exist as sort of membranes bumping into each other. When they bump together, a universe is create as a “big bang” on the new membrane.

As for alien life, it’s highly possible they do exist. We should ask ourselves what they would do if they found Earth, however. Considering that any species which would become dominant on its own planet and undertake the conquest of the stars would be more or less like us, we should assume they would be hostile once they discovered us. It seems more or less natural that we’d destroy hatever we touch, so why not them? The “I come in peace” doesen’t really make sense. Why come in peace? We represent a threat. My favourite is The Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man.” We’re just cattle for them.

From i09

New Form of Life Discovered: Uses Arsenic as Building Block of Life

NASA scientists have just announced the discovery of life fundamentally different from anything else we’ve ever seen before. Here’s what this discovery means for our understanding of biology, the search for extraterrestrial life, and even how this could revolutionize bioenergy.

What is the discovery?
The discovery, made by NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon and her team, is straightforward enough. We often think of carbon as the crucial element for life, but actually there are six elements that work together as the basis of every last organism we’ve ever found. These are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus. Phosphorus is part of the structural framework of DNA and RNA, essentially acting as the molecular girders that hold everything else in place.That makes phosphorus essential to the stability of DNA and, in turn, the existence of life.

Wolfe Simon investigated whether a different element could be substituted in the place of phosphorus. The obvious place to start is with arsenic, which is directly below phosphorus on the periodic table and thus shares many of the same properties. Her team headed to California’s Mono Lake near Yosemite National Park. Mono Lake is an incredibly unusual ecosystem, with three times the amount of salt as seawater and, crucially, it’s poor in phosphorus and rich in arsenic. Despite this, life thrives in Mono Lake, and so the team collected some microbe-rich mud and took it back to the lab.

There, they placed mud in a setting where the microbes would have everything they needed to live, such as sugar and vitamins. Crucially, however, they created a phosphorus-free environment and pumped the test area full of arsenic. Nothing should have survived in those conditions – indeed, arsenic is notoriously toxic. But the microbes didn’t just survive, they actually thrived in the seemingly impossible conditions.

The scientists then studied the microbes, and they discovered arsenic was found on a band of the genomic DNA. They isolated this section and found that arsenic wasn’t just stuck on top of the DNA – it had actually replaced the role of phosphorus. Arsenic had substituted for phosphorus as the backbone of the microbe’s DNA, fulfilling one of life’s most critical functions.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this discovery – these microbes are doing something fundamentally different from all other life on Earth. Wolfe Simon puts this discovery in context, explaining what it means for life on Earth…and beyond:"

Yeah, I was just reading about that Discovery, Zampano.

Astounding stuff, and proof of my own philosophical tenet:
We don’t know shit about life, or the universe.

Every single time we put a limit on what life can be or where it can be found we are just shown how wrong and simplistic our view of the universe is. There is not a single law of physics that isn’t defied by some object on some level; not one. Not a single one. That’s incredible to me.

…another thing I’d like to know is why nearly every type of internet forum has to have a section on String Theory? Has anyone else noticed that? Even in odd places, like on movie sites…

^ this kind of thread is an intellectual signifier.

I remember the first time I got stoned.

Here’s an interesting short about space, and also the microscopic:

Powers of Ten (Charles and Ray Eames, 1977)

It’s pretty likely that there is intelligent life out there somewhere. But, it’s also very likely it’s impossible to break the light barrier. So, any alien contact would involve either them or us traveling at relativistic speeds, and leaving our entire civilization behind.

That’s why I’m also not convinced interaction between us and alien species would necessarily be violent. It’s certainly likely, but it’s also very likely that any group of alien visitors would be a very small group. They would need to find people willing to abandon their own planet, and they would need to stockpile enough supplies for those people to potentially live for the rest of their lives, not knowing if they’ll even find edible food at their destination.

I also think it’s reasonable to guess that any aliens who would be willing to make such a trip would have more scientific curiosity about us. Unless it somehow actually is possible to break the light barrier without the annoying effects of time dilation, it just wouldn’t be worth coming here just to conquer us unless they had no other place to go, and there probably wouldn’t be enough of them making the trip to do so anyway.

The situation in District 9 is also a very realistic possibility.

I used to be into astronomy, I took a bunch of kids on a field trip one time but it clouded over & we couldn’t see a damn thing..then the clouds suddenly cleared in a small spot and a single bright star shone clearly through. They all wanted to know, “what’s that one, what’s that one, what’s that one…?!?” :):) mmmm dunno….. epic fail !♥

Anyway I found the whole thing (astronomy) so overwhelming the more I got into it I gave up on it. Don’t know what to say about the Cosmos, our place in it here & beyond our solar system except that I find the idea of it existing by some creator’s design just as nonsensical and insane as the idea it exists through some opportunistic set of accidental circumstances culminating in a “Big Bang” to kick things off. I read that the Cosmos resulting in a haphazard explostion is as likely as the Encyclopedia Brittanica resulting from an explostion in a print shop which sounds right to me. As for a creator well ok, my question there is, what the fuck is HE for.

How shall we use it and it use us in the future? dunno, I just wish we would look after what we’ve got instead of squandering it and star gazing about moving out there somewhere some day.

Eat chocolate, watch more movies.

and try to have sex

. . . not necessarily in that order.

The colors, man!

Anyway, now that everyone’s coming down, the last books I read on the subject were The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos, which amended String Theory somewhat. Utterly compelling books, even if it is mostly for the lay.

Space is curved. So, if you went out far enough, you’d be back where you started.

Kind of like NYC.