Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
[ 03-09-2004: Message edited by: Zair ]
Remember folks, each individual point of light in that picture represents around 100 billion stars, and you're only looking at a tiny, TINY sampling of the total number of galaxies in the universe. [ 03-09-2004: Message edited by: Maradon! ]
And to those who say there's no life in the universe except us: In all those stars, there's got to be a planet.. or maybe millions of planets, right? And in all those millions of planets, there's got to be thousands that are earth-like.. right? And in all those thousands of planets that are earth like, there's got to be a dozen or so that have maybe an ocean.. and out of those dozen, there's gotta be one that's a couple million years older then us, right? So where are my green, silicone based motherfucking aliens?!?!
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Delphi Aegis enlisted the help of an infinite number of monkeys to write:
Is it just me, or do the numbers that Adult Swim spews out in their mini-trip through the starfield seem wrong, somehow?And to those who say there's no life in the universe except us: In all those stars, there's got to be a planet.. or maybe millions of planets, right? And in all those millions of planets, there's got to be thousands that are earth-like.. right? And in all those thousands of planets that are earth like, there's got to be a dozen or so that have maybe an ocean.. and out of those dozen, there's gotta be one that's a couple million years older then us, right? So where are my green, silicone based motherfucking aliens?!?!
A couple hundred thousand light years from here, most likely.
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Verily, Liam doth proclaim:
It'd be extremely egotistical of us to assume we're the only planet in the entire universe which contains life.
It's ALSO horribly egotistical to assume to have ANY life in ANY way, you need an ocean (Though, it's easier for life to develop in an ocean, it is by no means a requirement), or carbon/silicone.. or even have the same cell structure.. or fuck, even have CELLS.
If and when we meet a new form of life, it'll probably meet US first. And it could be purely "mechanical", or fuck, andromeda strain-like (Crystals dividing main components for chemical reactions).
I mean, at least TNG came up with an in-depth, plausible EXCUSE as to why all the aliens in every episode of the original and the updated version had human-like aliens with "attachments". There was an original who sowed the basic form around the universe.
But I think if and when we meet another, sentient form of life from another system, it'll totally blow our fucking minds.
This Deep Field image is a really long exposure (11 days) photo. It can see galaxies to a limiting apparent magnitude of 30. THis result puts those galaxies (using average values for the absolute magnitude of galaxies) at about 10 billion light years away. That is really far away. It is amazing that we are able to get images like that, but it is also sad because we are losing the HST.
</astro nerd rant>
And yea, that is freaking cool. And to think we are alone is just completely asinine [ 03-09-2004: Message edited by: Pesco ]
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JooJooFlop's unholy Backstreet Boys obsession manifested in:
For some reason all the responses in this thread remind me of a bit from Family Guy: Peter is recording Stewie on his tricycle when a plastic bag caught in the wind with some leaves catches his attention and he starts spouting a lot of "Truely God is wonderful" stuff when the camera zips up to Heaven with God shouting "It's just a BAG! Do you have any idea how complex the human circulatory system is!?"
If you've done something right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
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Pesco was naked while typing this:
If humans had a version number.. what do you think it would be?
2 to the 64th power.
Which is about (Fuck, what was it?) 20 quintillion.
20,000,000,000,000,000,000. Yes, I calculated out the powers of 2 to 64. I was bored in math class! 
If the entire time the universe has been in existance was condensed down to the time of a year, humans would have evolved, built massive cities and wondered about their own existance.. all at 11:59:59 on the 31st of december.
This is not to say that there arent other forms of life out there, its just that based on his theories, it is very unlikely that we'll find another planet with inhabitants that are near identical to that of earth.
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And I was all like 'Oh yeah?' and KaLourin was all like:
I believe Asimov had, by way of theory and mathematical probability, concluded that only a possible *8* planets in the entire universe exist that formed and grew within the same criteria that Earth did (distance of the sun, surface temperature, etc etc) and would be capable of hosting life "as we know it"This is not to say that there arent other forms of life out there, its just that based on his theories, it is very unlikely that we'll find another planet with inhabitants that are near identical to that of earth.
The drake equation.
It takes a lot of factors, like number of stars in the galaxy, possible number of planets that are orbiting said stars, number of those that are earth-distance away, number of THOSE that are earth-like, number of THOSE that have ocean, probability that it would create life, etc.
Depending on the variables (We can guess within a couple billion how many stars there are, and after VERY VERY VERY careful observations over a period of time, determine if there's a planet orbiting a star, but it'd take a while to do that for every star. 
But there's a lot of guesswork involved), there could be thousands upon thousands or none that support "life as we know it".
I love this kinda stuff.
edit: while everyone else was in the library reading Cat in the Hat, I was signing out astronomy and paleontology books. go bookworm go [ 03-09-2004: Message edited by: KaLourin ]
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Check out the big brain on Kalculus Kid or Mathinator or Waisz!
What's really amazing is that Karnaj made a post with the word "deep" in the title and didn't make any sexual inneundos.
His powers are weakening. The time for battle is approaching.
Scientists were expecting to find more of a "mess"... the fact that the galaxies were all nicely formed that early in the Universe's life demolished a lot of theories about how galaxies form.
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Drysart had this to say about Punky Brewster:
Scientists were expecting to find more of a "mess"... the fact that the galaxies were all nicely formed that early in the Universe's life demolished a lot of theories about how galaxies form.
So you're saying that instead of a big bang, it was more like writing your name in the snow?
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Verily, Delphi Aegis doth proclaim:
It's ALSO horribly egotistical to assume to have ANY life in ANY way, you need an ocean (Though, it's easier for life to develop in an ocean, it is by no means a requirement), or carbon/silicone.. or even have the same cell structure.. or fuck, even have CELLS.If and when we meet a new form of life, it'll probably meet US first. And it could be purely "mechanical", or fuck, andromeda strain-like (Crystals dividing main components for chemical reactions).
I mean, at least TNG came up with an in-depth, plausible EXCUSE as to why all the aliens in every episode of the original and the updated version had human-like aliens with "attachments". There was an original who sowed the basic form around the universe.
But I think if and when we meet another, sentient form of life from another system, it'll totally blow our fucking minds.
No, actually. Life is all in the chemistry, good sir. Wouldn't listen to the soap operas in space on life. For that matter, I wouldn't be counting on extraterrestrial prokaryotes finding us.
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KaLourining:
I believe Asimov had, by way of theory and mathematical probability, concluded that only a possible *8* planets in the entire universe exist that formed and grew within the same criteria that Earth did (distance of the sun, surface temperature, etc etc) and would be capable of hosting life "as we know it"
Asimov made that prediction long before astronomers made the discovery that many, many more stars were host to planets than anyone previously believed was possible.
In Asimov's time, stars with planets were considered a rarity. Today we know that planets are thousands of times more common than we thought they were.
Plus, Isaac Asimov was a fiction writer
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Pvednes had this to say about Robocop:
No, actually. Life is all in the chemistry, good sir.Wouldn't listen to the soap operas in space on life.
For that matter, I wouldn't be counting on extraterrestrial prokaryotes finding us.
Life as we know it is all in the chemistry. Think outside the box, orange man.
All that life needs to be life is to eat, shit, and have sex (Take in nourishment, excrete waste, and reproduce); why do we need chemical reactions to do all that?
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Delphi Aegis's account was hax0red to write:
Life as we know it is all in the chemistry. Think outside the box, orange man.All that life needs to be life is to eat, shit, and have sex (Take in nourishment, excrete waste, and reproduce); why do we need chemical reactions to do all that?
The numerous other requirements of life aside, because we don't have midgets doing it all for us, perhaps?
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Maradon! stumbled drunkenly to the keyboard and typed:Plus, Isaac Asimov was a fiction writer
He wrote science fiction, exelent science fiction, because he was pretty fucking good at real science.
