earth part deux?

[Omaha Red Sox]

To the original post... humanity will probably never reach this earthlike planet. Even if we somehow achieve 1/100th of light speed, which is orders of magnitude faster than the fastest thing made by humanity, it would still take a long long time to get there. And the chances of any person getting there are null since they would be dead. I suppose we would need a ship that could support itself completely including population wise for hundreds of years. Who would sign themselves and all their descendants up for that?

And no way humanity sees the end of the earth. We'll have been killed by something by then. Probably ourselves.

Pretty much. I think so many people fantasize about living on another planet, but it's just greener grass.

So there are billions of stars per galaxy, and billions of galaxies in the universe, which means the number of stars out there is some number beyond what we can comprehend, each supporting multiple planets, and one of the closest few out of that billion to the billionth power number has an earth-like planet rotating around it.

I would imagine that not only is there life somewhere out there, but in many, many places out there (perhaps millions).

This is why I find it so hilarious when people begin speaking in terms of millions and billions of miles, years, etc. as if we can wrap our little minds around such numbers. We're a pretty confident species...

But I think the slow ones would take down mankind as well, it would just take a lot longer.

Funniest thing I've heard in a long while..

I remember watching a special on either the History or Discovery Channel awhile back on the seven most likely ways mankind will end. I'm not sure on the order of their probabilites but it went something like-

6) Robots take over
5) A black hole
4) Disease(natural or man-made)
3) Asteroid
2) Nuclear War
1) Climate change (not necessarily caused by man, could just be another Ice Age)

I forget what the 7th one was but it was an interesting special.

Something along those lines:

Highway 1: Extinction (Highly unlikely, but becoming more probable over great lengths of time unless we find our way to Highway 3).

A. Extinction by Natural Event

(1) Climate Change Has to be catastrophically extreme to achieve total extinction.

(2) Impact by asteroid or comet

(3) Change in Solar Output, resulting in an uninhabitable Earth.

(4) Disease or Catastrophic Pandemic

B. Extinction Through Man-Made Event

(1) Human-Induced Climate Change Once again this would have to be extreme.

(2) Nuclear Holocaust

(3) Man-Made Illness

(4) Unforeseeable Catastrophic technology

Highway 2: Status Quo (This will inevitably deadend at Highway 1 given enough time, unless

a path to Highway 3 is found).

A. Repetitious Rises and Falls

B. Stable civilization held together by some unforeseen social science or social philosophy,

but falling short of the third highway.

Highway 3: Transcendence (Highly desirable)

A. Interstellar Travel, maintaining our present physical form or biologically similar.

B. Transfer of ourselves to an artificial form, capable of surviving independent of our planet and sun.

C. Evolution, either natural or artificial, into a higher biological form able to devise new

and unforeseeable methods of survival.

Alternative Futures for Mankind

Where's Knapp?

[Metroid]

But I think the slow ones would take down mankind as well, it would just take a lot longer.

Funniest thing I've heard in a long while..

You wont be laughing when it happens.

[josebach]

But I think the slow ones would take down mankind as well, it would just take a lot longer.

Funniest thing I've heard in a long while..

You wont be laughing when it happens.

That would have been a lot scarier if it wasn't so obvious they were trying to avoid the cameraman.

Also, wouldn't you think at least one of them wouldn't have blood on their shirt? I see a trend forming there.

[Omaha Red Sox]

But I think the slow ones would take down mankind as well, it would just take a lot longer.

Funniest thing I've heard in a long while..

You wont be laughing when it happens.

Yeah I will, because I'll be thinking of that post while they're eating my brains.

[Metroid]

You wont be laughing when it happens.

That would have been a lot scarier if it wasn't so obvious they were trying to avoid the cameraman.

LOL, yeah it would've.

Also, wouldn't you think at least one of them wouldn't have blood on their shirt? I see a trend forming there.

some of them have blood on their shirts...or maybe it's just red paint I dunno.

Also just before it switches to the over head shot there appears to be a "skipping zombie." Zombies don't skip do they?

[Omaha Red Sox]

Knapp on vacation or something? Because he should have told someone...

[cardiac cats]

a wise man once said...

"Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity." -Wernher von Brown

Just some food for thought

[knapplc]

Knapp on vacation or something? Because he should have told someone...

Sorry! I was at a conference in Phoenix all week.

Here's what I said the last time we talked about this, which was actually a quote from the previous time we had talked about this:

There has got to be other life!

You mean, "Out There?"

I totally agree. The Universe is entirely too big for us to be the ONLY life. It is almost vast beyond our comprehension, except in the most general terms.

Tom Selleck hosted a really great show on The Learning Channel (back when it was still The LEARNING Channel) in 1993. It was a ten-part series where they discussed the best scientific data to date in really basic, easy to understand terms.

At the end of the series they went through some “conservative” numbers to show how possible/likely it is that there is life out there. They went something like this (paraphrasing):

If we took all the stars like our sun in the Universe, and only one percent of those had planets, and of those only one percent had planets like Earth, and only one percent of those had the necessary building blocks for life, and only one percent of those actually HAD life, and only one percent of those had life that was as technologically advanced as us, there would still be something like 100 million civilizations like ours in the Universe.

I’ve tried to find this quote online but I can’t. It’s certainly not conclusive and it really means nothing if there ARE 100 million civilizations like ours out there because if they are out there it doesn’t do us much good here, but the bottom line is that, with the billions of stars in our galaxy alone and the billions of galaxies that are out there, there HAS to be some other sentient species.

There HAS to be.

[Tiki]

Oooh quoted by Knapp to prove a point...I feels special! Good to see ya back!

[jayday]

If we took all the stars like our sun in the Universe, and only one percent of those had planets, and of those only one percent had planets like Earth, and only one percent of those had the necessary building blocks for life, and only one percent of those actually HAD life, and only one percent of those had life that was as technologically advanced as us, there would still be something like 100 million civilizations like ours in the Universe.

Wow, I think that is the craziest (mind-blowing crazy, not crackpot crazy) thing I've ever heard. I read that twice and I'm still having trouble wrapping my empty head around that number. Great stuff.