A New Outlook on Creation Itself
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine told me he had this amazing 13-episode Television series from the 70s called Cosmos by a guy called Carl Sagan, and that he couldn't get over the stuff that he had learned from it. Me, being an amateur astronomer wannabe, was instantly hooked and I immediately asked him for it. When I did get it, my hard disk was busted because the delivery boy had unwillingly given it a good rattle as he made it ride the carry basket on his bicycle. My hard disk 2005 November - 2006 October. It was a few weeks later when I finally persuaded my friend to make some time out of his 'busy' schedule and re-copy the stuff into another hard disk, but even then fate wasn't ready to allow me to watch it. The first two episodes had mysteriously gone corrupt and wasn't working. I was pretty pissed off but nowhere close to giving up. Alas, it was just a week ago I got all the episodes and was ready to start watching it. My friend warned me... that the series was going to change the way that I look at things, and by gosh, he was fucking right.
First, my perspective on the Milky Way, our home galaxy as Sagan puts it. I don't know exactly what, maybe it was my sixth grade education but I had always limited our galaxy to the sun (sol), the nine planets (now its 8 planets with 3 dwarf planets, the IAU, the reguratory body for astronomical nomenclature has recently classified Pluto, Ceris and Eris as Dwarf planets, as they are too small to be defined planets), and the galactic stuff including asteroid belts etc, as the confines of the galaxy. I tried to ask a few friends (ex-classmates) and was surprised to find out that they shared a similar notion on it. Boy, were we wrong. What I had mistakenly thought was the galaxy turns out to be nothing more than what astronomers call "solar system" which is at the end of one of the spiral arms of our galaxy which is fucking enormous. Get this... light takes 30,000 years to traverse it. How many stars does the Milky Way contain? Well, try 400-billion! And there are 100-million galaxies out there. Astronomical right?
After getting a real sense of how large the universe is, I began to really contemplate the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, or life for that matter. Up until now I have always been a bit skeptical but now I am not so sure. Especially when I take the Drake equation into consideration. According to the equation, there should be atleast a billion planets out there which can sustain, that is until the equation deals with the last variable. The ability of a civilization to sustain its life despite its technological advances. After discussing this with a friend, Horny, he was quick to point out that we deduced this idea based on our own inherently violent human nature to expand our domain and conquer everyting. He is right, alien civilizations may well be beyond that, and may acquire universal respect for all life, especially their own. Anyhow, the Drake equation reduces the number of possible civilizations to just 6 in our galaxy, and if that is placed randomly across the universe, we would have a living planet about 200 light years away from Earth. Then lets consider the Fermi paradox for a while, just to look at both sides of a possibility. The Fermi paradox argues that if the universe is so large (which it is) and if there should be so many galaxies with a handfull of viable planets, how come we've never come to contact with them or vice versa? Its a good question, but skeptics of this paradox counter argues a few possibilies. The 6 theoretical planets supporting life were allocated randomly across our galaxy. This doesn't mean they are actually dispersed this way, the nearest planet (or a cluster of planets) may well be over the other end of the galaxy, which puts a distance of 30,000 light years between us. Alien civilizations may still not be advanced enough to reach us, or perhaps we are the first advanced civilizations, points out Sagan, or maybe they aren't just interested. All possibilities, right?
For as long as I remember, I have always wanted to be an interstellar explorer but when I started learning about science I began to realize how impossibly difficult that really is for humanity as a whole. The closest star is Alpha Centauri, which is 85 light years away from Earth. Thats an enormous distance that we can never traverse with our current speeds unless we have ships large enough to carry an entire civilization and even then it would take hundreds, if not millions of years. So the only option turns out to be travel at near light speeds. Why near light speeds? Einstein's theory of special (or general) relativity which limits any speed that we may ever come up with to just 99.99% of the light of speed (around 300,000 km per second). I was surprised to learn from the show that when an object nears the speed of light, both time and space tends to bend around the object. Of course, I knew this from various science classes in high school but I never thought the implication of that could be so literal. That time and space does indeed bend literally (not figuratively) around an object when it reaches light speed. Sagan demonstrated the space-bending effect with a bicycle ride sequence but the update at the end of the episode was much clearer with the warping 3D grid effect. And the other, much more significant surprise was how time bends... or more like slows down when you reach those speeds. Not only mechanical, but physical too meaning that if you were travelling at or near the speed of light, not only would your watch be ticking slower but you would be aging slower too! Sagan speculated that we would be able to reach near light speeds in about a thousand years when we perfect nuclear fusion reactors and build ships large (kilometers in width) enough to have these gigantic funnel like apparatuses to harvest interstellar hydrogen as fuel while its travelling. Even more amazing is his guesswork stating that we would be able to travel to the end of the known universe in less than 50 years on such a futuristic space ship. That is 50 years inside a ship travelling near the speed of light. In real time, this would amount to about 10 billion years and the only problem arises. What the heck would these future astronauts return to? The sun is going to go out in 5 billion years from today and it would surely wipe out all life on Earth if not swallow the innermost 4 planets. Seems like all those fascinating tales of interstellar travel to the confines of the universe would die out with those brave space travellers. That is unless we find a wormhole or something, which are considered (theorized) to link distant corners of the universe somehow. I haven't read up on it yet, but intend to do so shortly, but I can understand that if this possible, we might also be able to travel back and forth in time. Another fascinating idea...
All in all, the show was a real eye-opener. My perspective on all of creation has been altered, drastically I might add but I am grateful for that. I thank Dr. Sagan for making such a colossal show and all his efforts in popularizing science in the late seventies and early eighties. If not for people like him, we would remain to be ignorants of how wonderful the universe truly is.
First, my perspective on the Milky Way, our home galaxy as Sagan puts it. I don't know exactly what, maybe it was my sixth grade education but I had always limited our galaxy to the sun (sol), the nine planets (now its 8 planets with 3 dwarf planets, the IAU, the reguratory body for astronomical nomenclature has recently classified Pluto, Ceris and Eris as Dwarf planets, as they are too small to be defined planets), and the galactic stuff including asteroid belts etc, as the confines of the galaxy. I tried to ask a few friends (ex-classmates) and was surprised to find out that they shared a similar notion on it. Boy, were we wrong. What I had mistakenly thought was the galaxy turns out to be nothing more than what astronomers call "solar system" which is at the end of one of the spiral arms of our galaxy which is fucking enormous. Get this... light takes 30,000 years to traverse it. How many stars does the Milky Way contain? Well, try 400-billion! And there are 100-million galaxies out there. Astronomical right?
After getting a real sense of how large the universe is, I began to really contemplate the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, or life for that matter. Up until now I have always been a bit skeptical but now I am not so sure. Especially when I take the Drake equation into consideration. According to the equation, there should be atleast a billion planets out there which can sustain, that is until the equation deals with the last variable. The ability of a civilization to sustain its life despite its technological advances. After discussing this with a friend, Horny, he was quick to point out that we deduced this idea based on our own inherently violent human nature to expand our domain and conquer everyting. He is right, alien civilizations may well be beyond that, and may acquire universal respect for all life, especially their own. Anyhow, the Drake equation reduces the number of possible civilizations to just 6 in our galaxy, and if that is placed randomly across the universe, we would have a living planet about 200 light years away from Earth. Then lets consider the Fermi paradox for a while, just to look at both sides of a possibility. The Fermi paradox argues that if the universe is so large (which it is) and if there should be so many galaxies with a handfull of viable planets, how come we've never come to contact with them or vice versa? Its a good question, but skeptics of this paradox counter argues a few possibilies. The 6 theoretical planets supporting life were allocated randomly across our galaxy. This doesn't mean they are actually dispersed this way, the nearest planet (or a cluster of planets) may well be over the other end of the galaxy, which puts a distance of 30,000 light years between us. Alien civilizations may still not be advanced enough to reach us, or perhaps we are the first advanced civilizations, points out Sagan, or maybe they aren't just interested. All possibilities, right?
For as long as I remember, I have always wanted to be an interstellar explorer but when I started learning about science I began to realize how impossibly difficult that really is for humanity as a whole. The closest star is Alpha Centauri, which is 85 light years away from Earth. Thats an enormous distance that we can never traverse with our current speeds unless we have ships large enough to carry an entire civilization and even then it would take hundreds, if not millions of years. So the only option turns out to be travel at near light speeds. Why near light speeds? Einstein's theory of special (or general) relativity which limits any speed that we may ever come up with to just 99.99% of the light of speed (around 300,000 km per second). I was surprised to learn from the show that when an object nears the speed of light, both time and space tends to bend around the object. Of course, I knew this from various science classes in high school but I never thought the implication of that could be so literal. That time and space does indeed bend literally (not figuratively) around an object when it reaches light speed. Sagan demonstrated the space-bending effect with a bicycle ride sequence but the update at the end of the episode was much clearer with the warping 3D grid effect. And the other, much more significant surprise was how time bends... or more like slows down when you reach those speeds. Not only mechanical, but physical too meaning that if you were travelling at or near the speed of light, not only would your watch be ticking slower but you would be aging slower too! Sagan speculated that we would be able to reach near light speeds in about a thousand years when we perfect nuclear fusion reactors and build ships large (kilometers in width) enough to have these gigantic funnel like apparatuses to harvest interstellar hydrogen as fuel while its travelling. Even more amazing is his guesswork stating that we would be able to travel to the end of the known universe in less than 50 years on such a futuristic space ship. That is 50 years inside a ship travelling near the speed of light. In real time, this would amount to about 10 billion years and the only problem arises. What the heck would these future astronauts return to? The sun is going to go out in 5 billion years from today and it would surely wipe out all life on Earth if not swallow the innermost 4 planets. Seems like all those fascinating tales of interstellar travel to the confines of the universe would die out with those brave space travellers. That is unless we find a wormhole or something, which are considered (theorized) to link distant corners of the universe somehow. I haven't read up on it yet, but intend to do so shortly, but I can understand that if this possible, we might also be able to travel back and forth in time. Another fascinating idea...
All in all, the show was a real eye-opener. My perspective on all of creation has been altered, drastically I might add but I am grateful for that. I thank Dr. Sagan for making such a colossal show and all his efforts in popularizing science in the late seventies and early eighties. If not for people like him, we would remain to be ignorants of how wonderful the universe truly is.
posted by f1x4n at
12:37 PM
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