This intro to an Evansville Courier Press editorial caught my eye:
Maybe we’re overstating it, but it seems that the more we learn about the universe — and we are learning a lot — it seems the less we know.
Well, now, that’s the beauty of it all, isn’t it? With the scientific method, curiosity, and a sense of wonder, the universe is like a cornucopia of puzzles to solve.
Specifically prompting this editorial:
Astronomers have discovered a distant galaxy — 5.7 billion light-years fitting anybody’s definition of “distant” — that spits out new stars at, well, an astronomical rate.
The galaxy is creating about 740 new stars a year, compared to about one a year for our own Milky Way.
Astronomers are nicknaming the galaxy Phoenix because, at 6 billion years old, it was thought to be dead, but it came back to life in a way that gave scientists new mysteries to puzzle over.
The universe is vast, and we are small; but we’re getting bigger. Compare the first couple million years of human progress versus the last five hundred or so. (Unless you believe that humans have only been around for 6,000 years, in which case, this discussion is probably already blasphemous.) If we can hold it together long enough to travel faster and get a foothold on other planets, our species could really make something of itself. Right now, however, we’re kind of making a mess of our nest on the planet Earth; and it’s an open question how long we’ll have the resources to continue progressing.
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Reminds me of some favorite lyrics: The only way you’ll ever learn a thing is to admit that you know absolutely nothing!
Also: Darkness is a harsh term don’t you think? And yet it dominates the things I see.
I think that headline is a line from Bruce Cockburn – or maybe Leonard Cohen, right?
Cockburn is where I got it. With a little call back in the body of the text referring to the beauty of it all.
Blasmphemer!
If we stay on this trajectory, it is only a matter of decades before we become the bad guys of Avatar, Independence Day, and the Tripods, and take oveer far-away worlds for their natural resources.
I should run a pool on the exact date.
All of this against the polling results that show some forty-plus percent of Americans believe the earth/universe is less than ten-thousand years old.
Species come, species go. Extinction is the fate for 99.99% of them. My uplifting contribution for the day.
Not sure how far humans will get out into space, it’s vast and hostile, so many hazards and so little beer. Our robots should fare much better however. Until, at some point, we will be their dimly remembered organic ancestors.
I do not think that humans will make much, if any, progress colonizing habitable outer space. Your description is apt. And the energy requirements to get anywhere are almost unimaginable.
“Cause there is no more new frontier, we will have to make it here.”
In a recent installment of “Through The Wormhole”, host Morgan Freeman posits the thought that when and if alien life elsewhere comes here or otherwise gets discovered, it will not be biological at all, but intelligent machines created by long-extinct creatures. They might even have alread arrived. Hence I will from now on treat my smart phone with both respect and caution.