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Originally posted by Haken:
I like this one:

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Thank you for sharing. :) I forgot how much I adore this movie, and the opening is truly lovely. Humbling and inspiring.



But at the same time.. if we are so remote, so alone, so tiny with so much space around us... how relevant IS what is around us, actually. How much do we really need to think about it, when the realities of our lives are right here, right now.

People used to find the same humility in the remote desert on this very planet, or on the sea, when they wanted quiet from the reality of human society. In the distant future of Firefly, people need to fly off to the edge of the new solar system to find it on the edge of the "Black". It's all about where we are, not what is out there.

In the end, gazing to the distance offers us a moment of perspective and a moment of respite, but to be wondering about it too much does us little good, when we need to be here in body and mind to solve our problems.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
It is quite a balancing act, keeping track of what's in front of us, while gazing off into the distance.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I stopped worrying about it when it occurred to me that life and conditions for life are so rare that we will probably never find them outside of our planet.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
I liken it to telling someone that here's the Sahara Desert, and there's a diamond in it the size of a grain of sand, and I want them to find it. Oh, and there's one more catch - that diamond only exists for one second every one thousand years. Good luck!

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Originally posted by Kwicko:

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I stopped worrying about it when it occurred to me that life and conditions for life are so rare that we will probably never find them outside of our planet.

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Yup. I wouldn't say I've ever *worried* about it. I do wonder, though. Not so much about what IS out there, but what HAS BEEN and WILL BE. 20 billion years is a long time...

As for life in the universe, I'm fairly convinced that wherever life CAN exist, it WILL. Life reaches out, always. Thing is, though, that if you lay out a graph with the age of the universe as one axis, and the SIZE of the universe as another, and then start looking around for specific points - both in space AND in time - where life might have existed, you start seeing how futile the search can be. And we're talking about ANY form of life that we'd recognize as "life"; that doesn't even account for narrowing it down to "intelligent life".

I liken it to telling someone that here's the Sahara Desert, and there's a diamond in it the size of a grain of sand, and I want them to find it. Oh, and there's one more catch - that diamond only exists for one second every one thousand years. Good luck!


Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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"It's LIFE, Captain, but not as we know it."

From a Christian viewpoint, that's something I've struggled with. We are just a tiny speck in the ginormous universe. It would seem that the odds would be that there MIGHT be other life out there. But on the other hand, it's said that Earth is in such a precise position relative to the Sun that any deviation from it's course and life couldn't exist here. And it's with that thought process I often wonder about the planets and moons of the 'Verse. Terraforming would have meant much more than just making the land liveable and air breathable. At least that's what I would expect.

And the life not as we know it? I think sometimes that could absolutely be true. There COULD be life out there that we just wouldn't expect - lifeforms that breath different atmosphere's, see differently, reproduce differently, etc.

But, as I believe there IS a God it's amazing that he put all that stuff out there for our viewing enjoyment. He can hold it all in the palm of his hand, looks through all of it down to the spec we call Earth and sees US and loves us. I know that might not be a popular point of view here, but that's an awesome thought and one that I cherish.

Mal: You think she'll hold together?
Zoë: She's torn up plenty, but she'll fly true.
Mal: Could be bumpy.
Zoë: Always is

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Originally posted by Haken:
I like this one:

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Originally posted by RIPWash:
But, as I believe there IS a God it's amazing that he put all that stuff out there for our viewing enjoyment. He can hold it all in the palm of his hand, looks through all of it down to the spec we call Earth and sees US and loves us. I know that might not be a popular point of view here, but that's an awesome thought and one that I cherish.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
I liken it to telling someone that here's the Sahara Desert, and there's a diamond in it the size of a grain of sand, and I want them to find it. Oh, and there's one more catch - that diamond only exists for one second every one thousand years. Good luck!

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That’s about the size of it.

Those who use the size of the universe to claim that it is statistically impossible for life not to exist somewhere else in the universe, never seem to stop to think that the same immensity means we will very probably never encounter any such life if it does exist. Personally, I’m certain that out of the thousands of galaxies, one of them must have a planet where some form of intelligent life has formed other then us, but it will take life times to navigate just within our tinny cluster of 11 stars. Baring some scientific discovery that overturns much of what we understand about physics right now (which isn’t entirely ridiculous) we will never populate the tinny Orion Spur (the arm of the Milky Way where the Sun is located), much less move beyond our own galaxy.

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Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Originally posted by RIPWash:

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Originally posted by Kwicko:

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I stopped worrying about it when it occurred to me that life and conditions for life are so rare that we will probably never find them outside of our planet.

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Yup. I wouldn't say I've ever *worried* about it. I do wonder, though. Not so much about what IS out there, but what HAS BEEN and WILL BE. 20 billion years is a long time...

As for life in the universe, I'm fairly convinced that wherever life CAN exist, it WILL. Life reaches out, always. Thing is, though, that if you lay out a graph with the age of the universe as one axis, and the SIZE of the universe as another, and then start looking around for specific points - both in space AND in time - where life might have existed, you start seeing how futile the search can be. And we're talking about ANY form of life that we'd recognize as "life"; that doesn't even account for narrowing it down to "intelligent life".

I liken it to telling someone that here's the Sahara Desert, and there's a diamond in it the size of a grain of sand, and I want them to find it. Oh, and there's one more catch - that diamond only exists for one second every one thousand years. Good luck!


Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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"It's LIFE, Captain, but not as we know it."

From a Christian viewpoint, that's something I've struggled with. We are just a tiny speck in the ginormous universe. It would seem that the odds would be that there MIGHT be other life out there. But on the other hand, it's said that Earth is in such a precise position relative to the Sun that any deviation from it's course and life couldn't exist here. And it's with that thought process I often wonder about the planets and moons of the 'Verse. Terraforming would have meant much more than just making the land liveable and air breathable. At least that's what I would expect.

And the life not as we know it? I think sometimes that could absolutely be true. There COULD be life out there that we just wouldn't expect - lifeforms that breath different atmosphere's, see differently, reproduce differently, etc.

But, as I believe there IS a God it's amazing that he put all that stuff out there for our viewing enjoyment. He can hold it all in the palm of his hand, looks through all of it down to the spec we call Earth and sees US and loves us. I know that might not be a popular point of view here, but that's an awesome thought and one that I cherish.

Mal: You think she'll hold together?
Zoë: She's torn up plenty, but she'll fly true.
Mal: Could be bumpy.
Zoë: Always is

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Thanks, Jongs. I love that picture. Or montage. :)

As I heard it described, the "slice" of sky represented in that photo is about the size your eye sees the period at the end of this sentence - if you held it out at arm's length, that is. And in that tiny speck of the sky... billions of stars and hundreds of galaxies. :jawdrop:

And if you look deeper, you'll see even more stars and galaxies.

Some people think about this stuff and feel very insignificant; I think about it and am just in awe that I'm even able to see it and comprehend the vastness of the universe. That alone proves that we are anything but insignificant! :)

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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Our own galactic neighbor, Andromeda is 2.2 million light-years away from us and only appears as an indistinguishable star-like speck of light in the sky.

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