that life exists on other planets? Do you believe that we can reach those other worlds? If so, why?
I’m particularly interested in atheist and scientist perspectives retlated to traveling at speeds fast enough to reach other worlds.
Oh, the reason I said “non-Catholics” because we all know that Catholics will no doubt be likely to post first and most often.
I like to think about this sort of thing. It’s a timely question because some recent experiments seem to have observed particles other than photons reaching the speed of light. These particles were neutrinos, however, neutrinos are rather curious little fellows anyway. Anyway, I don’t think that human kind will ever reach or exceed light speed, and Prof. Hawking pretty much proved that with his now famous dinner party experiment, which related more to time travel, but the implications are the same. Or at least he proved it to my satisfaction. Making it to distant places in the universe will in my opinion involve trans- dimensional travel, or some sort of quantum travel that is based on mind or conscious travel rather than physical. Carbon based beings with the same sensory limitations as ours would have to develop another level of consciousness to do that. I think we will evolve to that if we don’t destroy ourselves first. Carbon based sentient beings with similar sensory/brain function as our own will likely to be found travelling transcendentally and independently of physical limitation. In other words, you won’t have to go somewhere to know what is there. Whether that is via huge or yet unimagined telescopes or developed telepathy, it is all the same - both are the product of the human mind, and I hope we get there. I have no proof of any of this. These are just the musings of Sufjon’s mind, and I love to think about it.
I think that the probability of life on other planets is rather high mathematically, simply based on the enormity of the numbers involved. That said, one must also realize that humanity holds a rare place in the universe. We seem to be in the middle of things if one were to look at a scale of it all. Between the smallest particles and the largest objects such as suns, we are in the middle. We are on a mid size planet in a mid-size solar system within a mid size spiral galaxy. In the animal kingdom we are in the middle. Our bodies are just big enough to support the type of brain we have, but just small enough to avoid undue delay in signals from the brain to other sense organs. We are in a peculiar spot. Hence we are looking for beings in the same spot. That will be rare in one sense and plentiful in another. From a mathematical view, it’s plentiful – among trillions of stars in trillions of galaxies, if there was only one chance in a trillion of life elsewhere, that means there are trillions of them. From the perspective of matter, it’s rare. Most matter in the universe is dark matter, and the matter that we deal in with our senses is rare and mostly hydrogen and helium. Rarer still is carbon matter, which is made up of debris from dead stars, and this is what we are made of. As insignificant as we are in comparison with the titanic scale of the universe, we play an important role in it’s existence, and it is our consciousness that plays that role. Quantum mechanics insists that nothing exists without consciousness, or at least that’s how I read it. Nothing collapses into a reality unless observed by a conscious mind, therefore, physical reality is an epiphenomenon of mind, and since mind is brain, mind is also an epiphenomenon of the physical world. They are co-dependent, and It’s something of a tangled hierarchy or strange loop, unless one were to allow that sentience is dependent on consciousness, but that consciousness is independent of sentience and independent of all else as well. It makes sense to me then, that consciousness will be the vehicle by which we explore alien worlds, and the means by which aliens are exploring ours. At that level of awareness, there is no need to reach out to us or to interfere. To know is enough.
Meanwhile, we are defining the universe with our sense organs in the manner in which we are able. Other beings are probably defining it with other organs of consciousness or even sentience and perhaps defining on the level of dimensions that we are unable to comprehend. Together, these levels of awareness bestow the attributes on the physical universe that attend those levels of awareness. For us it’s sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell being fed into a central processing brain, and these create the universe on the level at which we perceive it, and perhaps this is unique to us. We look up on a clear day and say that the sky is blue. But that is only the effect of photons reflecting off of our retinas, fed into the optic nerve and then to the brain, which sees a sky that is blue. But if you were to float upwards, no matter how high you float, the sky is always above you. Then at some point you reach a spot where there is blackness all around you and the earth is below you. The sky was never reached, and at this point it becomes evident that not only is the sky not blue, there is really no sky. We created it. It’s an effect caused by our nervous system in reaction to a phenomenon outside of it and interacting with it. It depends on us for it’s existence. Will it ever be possible to share on some level the reality of other beings in some far off region of space whose sensory tool kit is nothing like our own? What universe have they created?
Your friend
Sujfon
I don’t know.
