If God both created the Universe and cares about humans, why did he make it so large?

[buffalo]

LogisticsBranch, if you look back through the thread you’ll see all my posts which clearly show me as a “heliocentrist”, I’ve even said I didn’t know there were any Catholic geocentrist out there, until now. But I think when someone is arguing their beliefs in an respectful and intelligent manner, we owe it to them to show them reciprocal respect. And as I pointed out, according to Relativity it’s not truly wrong to say the earth is at “rest”, so things get a little weird once we go down the rabbit hole of absolute motion in the universe. Insulting people on the forum is never a good idea (especially this one, where the mods have a near zero tolerence for it, people get banned every week). Me and you have actually interacted in the past and had a very pleasant exchange, while both disagreeing with the trollish behavior of another poster on the thread (who has since been banned, I saw that one coming way back then). Anyway, take a peak at an old thread of mine where we agreed and let’s just all be respectful of those we disagree with.
see post #128, forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=6830316#post6830316

Peace, let’s all be friends here

The fact is the average person is shocked to learn that relativity posits that a center can be anywhere. They are shocked to learn that there are two positions being argued.

1 Acentrism -center can be anywhere

1. Geocentrism - earth can be at center (also supported by acentrism)

 

[ricmat]

I had brought this up earlier, no one really touched on it though. Anyway, according to the Theory of Relativity, there is NO absolute standard of rest in the universe against which all motion can be measured, it’s not like you can have an empty area of space, say a cubic mile of space, and then say that a spacecraft is “moving” 1000 miles per hour in relation to that volume of space. Instead, all motion of objects is measured in relation to other objects, a spacecraft can be considered “at rest”, or going a million miles an hour, depending on want you’re measuring it’s motion against. You just look at the “spacewalks”, where the astronaunts are “floating” in space, you can say they are not moving, or are traveling 10000 miles an hour in relation to the continent passing below them on Earth, or you can measure them at any other speed, none of speeds are* wrong*. Now, I believe the motions of the planets are explained by the force of gravity causing them to be in orbits relative to the Sun. However, if someone wants to say that Jupiter is at rest, and thus at the center of the universe, according to Relativity, they are not truly incorrect. Obviously, we can say the same thing in regards to the Earth. It’s a weird world out there.

Right. And I would add that in actuality, Earth does not revolve around the sun. If you were to consider ONLY the Earth and the Sun, both bodies revolve around the center of gravity of the 2 combined masses. Now, if you consider the masses of everything in the universe, what is revolving around what? (Hint: to calculate the orbits of even a small number of masses is virtually impossible, so doing it for the whole universe is of course not possible.)

Now, if someone wants to claim that the Earth is the center of the universe, I see no problems with that. There is no way to disprove it scientifically. Theologically it makes sense - unless your theology is such that it requires that mankind is a sort of cosmic accident (as per Fr. George Coyne mentioned by Logistics Branch) rather than being the pinnacle of God’s creation.

 

[buffalo]

Right. And I would add that in actuality, Earth does not revolve around the sun. If you were to consider ONLY the Earth and the Sun, both bodies revolve around the center of gravity of the 2 combined masses. Now, if you consider the masses of everything in the universe, what is revolving around what? (Hint: to calculate the orbits of even a small number of masses is virtually impossible, so doing it for the whole universe is of course not possible.)

Now, if someone wants to claim that the Earth is the center of the universe, I see no problems with that. There is no way to disprove it scientifically. Theologically it makes sense - unless your theology is such that it requires that mankind is a sort of cosmic accident (as per Fr. George Coyne mentioned by Logistics Branch) rather than being the pinnacle of God’s creation.

Galactocentric data would suggest it all rotates around a point close to earth.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

Theologically it makes sense - unless your theology is such that it requires that mankind is a sort of cosmic accident.

Or as the famous atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell called man “a curious accident in a backwater"

got that one from Stephen Barr, a great Catholic writer and theoretical particle physicist. firstthings.com/article/2007/01/anthropic-coincidences-40

Right. And I would add that in actuality, Earth does not revolve around the sun. If you were to consider ONLY the Earth and the Sun, both bodies revolve around the center of gravity of the 2 combined masses.

This is true, they have been able to infer the existence of other planets around some stars, not by observing the actual planets with a telescope, but by observing that the star itself is slightly revolving in relation to a smaller body nearby, i.e. the unseen planet is causing the star to move back and forth.

 

[cassini]

Hmm - a discussion with real content seems to have been derailed by some gratuitous cutting and pasting (by more than one person) and the fallacy of the argument from internet authority. I hope that all of this doesn’t prevent cassini from setting out his self-consistent and dynamically plausible theory that explains the 20.5 arcseconds of annual stellar aberration and the 0.78 arcseconds of stellar parallax which I am still hoping to see.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

OK hecd, back to your question as requested by you.

First relativity. If you bear with me Alec while I explain to non-scientifically minded readers of the thread the meaning of the expression spatial relativity.

God chose to create the universe, made up of space and material bodies, the extent of and numbers of only He knows. In the Bible He did tell us the stars are as numerous as grains of sand in the world. As astronomy progressed only then did man discover the Bible was not exaggerating, countless stars as countless as the grains of sand on the earth. The existence of space is taken for granted. By that I mean it is usually forgotten when we hear of the Big Bang theory. That only speculates on the existence of matter and it supposed distribution into space. In other words space is taken to be there already. Because space is ‘invisible room for matter’ it sort of doesn’t need to be created by nature, it is pretended that it was already there as ‘nothing’. Such a belief system needs as much fath as those who believe God created both the space and the matter of the material universe.

Then again maybe they have updated the Big Bang theory to include the natural creation of space also, or even the distribution of space that had been sqeeezed into the first atom with all the matter. The theory would have to include that both space and matter expanded after the BB and continues to do so. Anyone with a rational mind will see such a scenario is not science but magic. Theistic Big Bangers will of course say God made a space and matter BB, as He could have, but Dawkins and Hawking would laugh at that anf they hold the same scientific belief system that Catholic heliocentricists (Copernicans) do…

Anyway, in space, only if we know of a body at rest, can we determine the movement or not of bodies relative to the body at rest. Now man does not know of a body at rest, so all we do know is that spatial relativity prevails when trying to determine if OUR world is a stationary earth relative to the sun and stars in space, or if it is a stationary sun about which we rotate in fixed-star space. That is science, pure, exact, true science.

Now if we are to stick with science then all phenomena observed from earth must have a relative alternative. So, if we observe stellar aberration from earth, then there has to be two explanations to this in science, that the stars rotate (with the sun) around a stationary earth annually or that the earth rotates around the sun annually in a fixed star cosmos. Now that is the science of it.

Both heliocentricism and geocentricism is removed from science. It is a preference decided on by man. Heliocentrism is based on heliocentric theory, and geocentrism is based on faith. So powerful however is the heliocentric theory, because it is backed up by very ‘reasonable and understandable’ theories of physics, most heliocentrists actually think that the physics of heliocentrism are facts of nature. Believing this they use them like facts and wonder why faith based geocentrists do not bow to their Newtonian and Einsteinian ‘facts’ that are really only theories. Why these scientifically-minded people cannot discern the difference is a mystery to me. Why is it only faith based geocentrists know the limits of spatial science?

Let me demonstrate this H theory/fact/ factor. Ricmac above posts the following:
’Right. And I would add that in actuality, Earth does not revolve around the sun. If you were to consider ONLY the Earth and the Sun, both bodies revolve around the center of gravity of the 2 combined masses. Now, if you consider the masses of everything in the universe, what is revolving around what? (Hint: to calculate the orbits of even a small number of masses is virtually impossible, so doing it for the whole universe is of course not possible.)'
See here ricmac using Newtonian gravity theory as a fact. Now if it were a fact, there would be no contest. Time after time theory is used as a fact because heliocentrists do believe these theories are established facts. Why do Hs not know the difference between a theory and a fact of science? It is the basis of the whole debate.

What is totally missing is subjective thought. So certain are heliocentrists that they will not or cannot accept that relativity is the only fact between the movements of the earth, sun and stars.

If only all could agree on what is a theory and what is a scientific fact then we could begin a discussion as to which of the two belief systems Catholics should accept as the true one. That we would have a debate of enormous importance.

 

[ricmat]

Both heliocentricism and geocentricism is removed from science. It is a preference decided on by man. Heliocentrism is based on heliocentric theory, and geocentrism is based on faith. So powerful however is the heliocentric theory, because it is backed up by very ‘reasonable and understandable’ theories of physics, most heliocentrists actually think that the physics of heliocentrism are facts of nature. Believing this they use them like facts and wonder why faith based geocentrists do not bow to their Newtonian and Einsteinian ‘facts’ that are really only theories. Why these scientifically-minded people cannot discern the difference is a mystery to me. Why is it only faith based geocentrists know the limits of spatial science?

Let me demonstrate this H theory/fact/ factor. Ricmac above posts the following:
’Right. And I would add that in actuality, Earth does not revolve around the sun. If you were to consider ONLY the Earth and the Sun, both bodies revolve around the center of gravity of the 2 combined masses. Now, if you consider the masses of everything in the universe, what is revolving around what? (Hint: to calculate the orbits of even a small number of masses is virtually impossible, so doing it for the whole universe is of course not possible.)'
See here ricmac using Newtonian gravity theory as a fact. Now if it were a fact, there would be no contest. Time after time theory is used as a fact because heliocentrists do believe these theories are established facts. Why do Hs not know the difference between a theory and a fact of science? It is the basis of the whole debate.

Cassini, I was attempting to show that even if one accepts the Newtonian gravity theory, that it is STILL impossible to say what is the center of the universe, and to say what is revolving about what. I’m trying to help you out here…

 

[cassini]

Cassini, I was attempting to show that even if one accepts the Newtonian gravity theory, that it is STILL impossible to say what is the center of the universe, and to say what is revolving about what. I’m trying to help you out here…

Sorry ricmat, read you wrong, and I need all the friends I can muster, sorry.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

The existence of space is taken for granted. By that I mean it is usually forgotten when we hear of the Big Bang theory. That only speculates on the existence of matter and it supposed distribution into space. In other words space is taken to be there already. Because space is ‘invisible room for matter’ it sort of doesn’t need to be created by nature, it is pretended that it was already there as ‘nothing’.

cassini, if I may, actually the Standard Big Bang model does include the “creation” of space (as well as time) with the Big Bang. According to the standard theory, there was no time or space “before” that first moment of the Big Bang. This is all inferred from the Singularity Theorems of Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking in the early 1970’s. These theorems, which make up the back-bone of the Standard Big Bang model say that as you run the clock backwards towards the Big Bang, all the matter in the universe (which is now expanding outward) is instead compressed closer and closer together, until all the matter is packed into a tighter and tighter ball (running the clock backwards towards the Big Bang). As the matter is compressed, its density approaches infinity, and while the density of matter goes to infinity, this causes the curvature of space-time to also go to infinity (according to General Relativity, a large mass “bends” space-time). Finally, at the moment of the Big Bang, all the matter is in an infinitesimal dimensionless point, of infinite density and with an infinite curvature of space-time, thus time itself “stops”, (or comes into existence, when running the clock forward).

Atheist minded scientists have HATED this Standard Big Bang model and the implications of time coming into existence with the universe, it looks too much like a creation event for them, Hawking himself has tried all kinds of smoke and mirror theories (like his “no-boundary” proposal) to get away from the implications of the standard model. It looks too much like it supports the traditional Christian doctrine that space and time itself were created along with the material universe by God. Guys like Hawking hate having theories that sound like Saint Augustine, when he wrote “Then assuredly the world was made, not in time, but simultaneous with time. For that which is made in time is made both after and before some time - after that which is past, before that which is future. But none could then be past, for there was no creature by whose movements its duration could be measured. But simultaneously with time the world was made”

 

[hecd2]

Now, if someone wants to claim that the Earth is the center of the universe, I see no problems with that. There is no way to disprove it scientifically.

The geocentrists claim that earth is permanently at rest and non-rotating at the centre of the universe. There are many ways to show that this is not a tenable claim in neither Newtonian mechanics nor Special Relativity nor General Relativity.

The suggestion that all reference frames are equivalent is an error - frames at ‘rest’ are a special subset of frames experiencing uniform motion and can be unambiguously distinguished from frames experiencing accelerations - it can be shown by many observations that any point on the earth’s surface is at rest in a frame experiencing accelerations and therefore cannot be either in uniform motion or at rest.

If someone wants to claim that the Earth is the centre of the universe for theological reasons, I have no problem with that, but if someone misuses and misinterprets science in an attempt to show that the geocentric claim as laid out above is scientifically viable then I do have to take issue with it.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[ricmat]

The geocentrists claim that earth is permanently at rest and non-rotating at the centre of the universe. There are many ways to show that this is not a tenable claim in neither Newtonian mechanics nor Special Relativity nor General Relativity.

The suggestion that all reference frames are equivalent is an error - frames at ‘rest’ are a special subset of frames experiencing uniform motion and can be unambiguously distinguished from frames experiencing accelerations - it can be shown by many observations that any point on the earth’s surface is at rest in a frame experiencing accelerations and therefore cannot be either in uniform motion or at rest.

If someone wants to claim that the Earth is the centre of the universe for theological reasons, I have no problem with that, but if someone misuses and misinterprets science in an attempt to show that the geocentric claim as laid out above is scientifically viable then I do have to take issue with it.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

So exactly what in my post (not someone else’s) are you taking issue with?

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

The geocentrists claim that earth is permanently at rest and non-rotating at the centre of the universe. There are many ways to show that this is not a tenable claim in neither Newtonian mechanics nor Special Relativity nor General Relativity.

The suggestion that all reference frames are equivalent is an error - frames at ‘rest’ are a special subset of frames experiencing uniform motion and can be unambiguously distinguished from frames experiencing accelerations - it can be shown by many observations that any point on the earth’s surface is at rest in a frame experiencing accelerations and therefore cannot be either in uniform motion or at rest.

If someone wants to claim that the Earth is the centre of the universe for theological reasons, I have no problem with that, but if someone misuses and misinterprets science in an attempt to show that the geocentric claim as laid out above is scientifically viable then I do have to take issue with it.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

Alec that’s a red herring you’re introducting there, the earth’s motion is not accelerating, it’s constant, any object which is not in an acceleration can also be considered at rest.

 

[hecd2]

OK hecd, back to your question as requested by you.

First relativity. If you bear with me Alec while I explain to non-scientifically minded readers of the thread the meaning of the expression spatial relativity.

(Snip)

Anyway, in space, only if we know of a body at rest, can we determine the movement or not of bodies relative to the body at rest. Now man does not know of a body at rest, so all we do know is that spatial relativity prevails when trying to determine if OUR world is a stationary earth relative to the sun and stars in space, or if it is a stationary sun about which we rotate in fixed-star space. That is science, pure, exact, true science.

This claim seems to be that *all *frames are equivalent which is not a claim that you will find in Newtonian mechanics, special relativity or general relativity. In all cases accelerating and rotating frames can be unambiguously differentiated from frames in uniform motion. In every case it can be shown that the surface of the earth is not at rest in a non-rotating non-accelerating frame. Your idea of “spatial relativity”, ie all frames are equivalent, is wrong.

By the way, no-one is claiming that the sun is stationary. It would really be appreciated if you wou;ld give up this “heliocentric” strawman.

Now if we are to stick with science then all phenomena observed from earth must have a relative alternative. So, if we observe stellar aberration from earth, then there has to be two explanations to this in science, that the stars rotate (with the sun) around a stationary earth annually or that the earth rotates around the sun annually in a fixed star cosmos. Now that is the science of it.

I’m afraid you are wrong about this, almost certainly because you fail to understand the phenomenon. Annual stellar aberration is caused by changes in the earth’s motion vector with respect to the direction of light propagation from the star at the point of measurement, and it’s magnitude depends on the ratio between the speed of light and the component of the earth’s velocity perpendicular to the light propagation. It is independent of the star’s motion - ie it cannot be explained by motion of the star field.

I think you are invoking a modified Tychonian system in attempting your explanation above - (your proposition is that the sun rotates annually around the earth and the star field is centred on the sun - for some unknown reason - wouldn’t this mean that the sun is the centre of the universe? - never mind, let’s go on with your argument). Your proposition would be that stellar aberration is caused simply by a visible wobble of a rather close star field. In this case there are two reasons why this cannot be so which are fatal to your model. First, since stellar aberration is the same for all stars at the same ecliptic latitude, then all stars would have to be the same distance from the sun - all the hundred thousand billion billion stars in the universe would have to lie on a shell about 58 light days away from the earth. There are many reasons why this cannot be so. The second point is rather technical but absolutely fatal to your proposition - the direction of stellar aberration is measured to be tangential ie at right angles to the direction of the sun from the earth. Your proposition requires it to be in the radial direction ie in the direction of the sun. To put it another way the observed phenomenon is 90 degrees out of phase with what would be observed if your suggestion were true.

So, you still haven’t provided a geocentric explanation of stellar aberration, never mind one that also consistently explains stellar parallax. Would you like another try?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Alec that’s a red herring you’re introducting there, the earth’s motion is not accelerating, it’s constant, any object which is not in an acceleration can also be considered at rest.

The geocentric claim is that the earth is non-rotating and at rest at the centre of the universe. Let’s ignbore GR because the question is meaningless in GR (and geocentrists reject GR anyway) . Then, for the claim to be true it is a necessary but not sufficient condition that points on the earth’s surface must be at rest in a non-accelerating non-rotating (ie inertial) frame. A point at rest with respect to the earth’s surface experiences centrifugal and coriolis forces and other experiments such as stellar aberration point to a time-varying velocity of the earth (ie acceleration). Points at rest wrt the earth’s surface are not at rest in an inertial frame, the earth’s surface is not at rest in a non-accelerating frame and it’s not a red herring.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

The geocentric claim is that the earth is non-rotating and at rest at the centre of the universe. Let’s ignbore GR because the question is meaningless in GR (and geocentrists reject GR anyway)

How do you know ALL geocentrists reject GR. That’s kind of setting up a strawman there, what about a geocentrists who doesn’t reject General Relativity?

What we DO know is that there is NO absolute standard of rest in the universe and there is NO absolute center of the universe, so any non-accelerating object could be considered to be at rest and in the center. If you are in a spacewalk above the earth, going at the same “speed” as the rotation of the earth, and constantly looking down on the city of Boston, then you can claim that you and boston are at rest. And the rest-mass of an atom of gold in your spacesuit would be the exact same as the rest-mass of an atom of gold sitting in some jewelry shop in Boston.

I never considered the earth to be at rest before, but if it really annoys people I might start doing that

 

[hecd2]

So exactly what in my post (not someone else’s) are you taking issue with?

Your highlighted claim:

ricmat:

Now, if someone wants to claim that the Earth is the center of the universe, I see no problems with that. There is no way to disprove it scientifically.

Your argument was about a Newtonian system. In a strictly Newtonian system, and given the relative strengths of the sun’s and other stars’ gravitational fields at the earth, an unmoving earth is not viable - a) the rest of the universe cannot “balance” the sun’s gravitational field (ie the earth cannot be at the L1 Lagrange point of the sun and the rest of the universe given the proximity of the earth to the sun) - am happy to provide numbers if you like - b) no extended object (ie earth) can remain permanently at the centre of mass of the universe - the existence of a fixed centre of mass in a Newtonian system of freely moving particles subject to gravitation and elastic interactions alone should not be confused with the claim that a point on an extended object (eg the earth) is at that fixed centre of mass, which it can be instantaneously but not for a finitely long time - and this ignores non gravitational forces such as electromagnetic interactions and non-elastic interactions which in any real system mean that even the centre of mass is not fixed.

Alec
http;//www.evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

How do you know ALL geocentrists reject GR. That’s kind of setting up a strawman there, what about a geocentrists who doesn’t reject General Relativity?

A geocentrist who accepts GR is a contradiction in terms: the centre of the universe has no meaning in GR, because in GR models the universe is unbounded in space-like dimensions, because in GR space-time is curved by the presence of massive objects, because there is no absolute standard for rest and because there are no global frames in GR. I have never come across a geocentrist who accepts (and understands the implications of) GR but I would be intrigued if you could point me to such a person.

What we DO know is that there is NO absolute standard of rest in the universe and there is NO absolute center of the universe,

Correct - but there *is *an absolute standard of frames which cannot be at rest because they rae accelerating or rotating.

so any non-accelerating object could be considered to be at rest and in the center. If you are in a spacewalk above the earth, going at the same “speed” as the rotation of the earth, and constantly looking down on the city of Boston, then you can claim that you and boston are at rest.

You could claim it, but you’d be wrong. In Newtonian mechanics and in SR, which have global reference frames neither you nor Boston are at rest - should you succeed to maintain this odd orbit (see below) you both occupy a rotating frame of reference which can be shown unambiguously to be rotating by the fact that a test point at rest in the frame experiences centrifugal and coriolis forces (there is other evidence such as stellar aberration which demonstrates that both you and Boston are accelerating by reason of earth’s annual orbit). And in GR, you can’t even define global reference frames. By the way, the scenario is unrealistic since there is no such thing as a free orbit which is stationary over Boston - all geo-stationary orbits are equatorial. Something in such an equatorial geostationary orbit could be considered to be in uniform motion (following a time-like geodesic) in GR.

And the rest-mass of an atom of gold in your spacesuit would be the exact same as the rest-mass of an atom of gold sitting in some jewelry shop in Boston.

Yes, but so what? The rest mass of any particle is defined as the mass-energy measured in the frame at which the particle is at rest. The rest mass of an atom of gold as it crosses the event horizon of a black hole is exactly the same as the one in the jewellery shop in Boston, provided you measure it in a reference frame in which the atom is at rest.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[LogisticsBranch]

ronnie bonigli, I don’t mind being your friend. It’s nice you made the gesture. I do wish to note that there has been distortion of truth by certain members as noted in previous discussions. Our kind readers can view my responses as noted on previous pages.

I’m rushed for time but wanted to contribute once again. Thanks to my friends at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration they have “Our Solar System for educators and Educators and Grades K–12+” which I think some people on this topic are in need of reviewing. Here’s the link:
nasa.gov/pdf/58275main_Solar.System.Lithograph.Set.pdf

I hope everyone understands that youth of today are very intelligent.

My puppy Grace is absolutley running rings around me. I have to go.LOL!

 

[ricmat]

So exactly what in my post (not someone else’s) are you taking issue with?

Your highlighted claim:

				Originally Posted by **ricmat** 					 				
			*Now, if someone wants to claim that the Earth is the center of the universe, I see no problems with that. **There is no way to disprove it scientifically.***

Your argument was about a Newtonian system. In a strictly Newtonian system, and given the relative strengths of the sun’s and other stars’ gravitational fields at the earth, an unmoving earth is not viable - a) the rest of the universe cannot “balance” the sun’s gravitational field (ie the earth cannot be at the L1 Lagrange point of the sun and the rest of the universe given the proximity of the earth to the sun) - am happy to provide numbers if you like - b) no extended object (ie earth) can remain permanently at the centre of mass of the universe - the existence of a fixed centre of mass in a Newtonian system of freely moving particles subject to gravitation and elastic interactions alone should not be confused with the claim that a point on an extended object (eg the earth) is at that fixed centre of mass, which it can be instantaneously but not for a finitely long time - and this ignores non gravitational forces such as electromagnetic interactions and non-elastic interactions which in any real system mean that even the centre of mass is not fixed.

Alec
http;//www.evolutionpages.com

First off - I said nothing about the earth rotating. And unless you happen to know all of the masses (and their distances) in the universe - which you don’t, there is no way to calculate where the center of mass of the universe actually is. Or where it will be in an hour. Or where it was an hour ago. So to say that “It definitely wasn’t / isn’t / won’t be here” is not scientifically possible.

And even if you had all the masses and their distance and directions, it’s an impossible calculation anyway.

But suppose you had a super computer that could do it. You’d have to know at what speed gravity (waves?) travel. Do you know?

And even then, you are assuming that the center of the universe is the same as the center of mass of the universe - which I suppose is one way to look at it, but there are others I’m sure.

 

[Los_Angeles]

I have been trying to follow this conversation but it is way too technical for me.

I have one question for the geocentrists. If the earth is at the center of the universe, then how do you account for the fact that man has used modern science and its equations to send man to the moon and spacecraft to other planets?

If anything I have said is against the Catholic Church, let it be anathema.

 

[kingal86]

ONLY Planet earth can sustain LIFE

…as far as we know at this present moment. I read the Vatican’s astronomer speculating on extraterrestrial life a while ago (with a bit of tabloid hyperbole in the headline): news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7399661.stm