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Watching ‘Through the Wormhole’ with Morgan Freeman, and he said “Is the universe infinite.  Or does it have an edge?”

As with all the great questions: Did anything exist before the big bang, is there intelligent life on other planets, did Woody Allen really

shtoop his little step-daughter or did Mia Farrow set him up – the mind boggles at either answer. 

We’re on our way

If the universe is infinite then WTF, that is just way more space than we can imagine.  Not only will we, no matter how boldly we go, never reach the edge of it, civilizations which are technologically millions of years ahead of us, who have mastered telekinesis, and exist as pure energy beings who can transmute elements with their  fingertips, and nip in and out of time at will, will never reach the end of it, either.

If it has an edge, the question becomes ‘What is beyond that edge?  Nothing?  How much nothing?  If our universe has an edge, won’t that  great emptiness have an  edge on the other side of it, where other universe exist?

Although the science is beyond me, I go with the  infinity angle.  It seems right.  Due to the fact that the universe exists, (and we know it really does because Des Cartes, the famous French guy who said “Come on, philosopher people, get over this ‘does it exist’ crap.  That’s not even a valid question.  Are  you all blind, or what?”) we know that there are physical laws which allow it to exist, and so those physical laws must predate existence, and if they allowed for the creation of our universe, they must have allowed for the creation of other universes as well, as they exist everywhere, without even the need for a universe to obey them.

And I see little difference between an infinite universe and an infinite series of universes.  Either way, it goes on forever and ever and ever…..

Now, here is a little internet anomaly which you might find amusing, but is definitely mystifying, because everybody is mystified.  Not because there is no possible explanation.  There are many possible explanations, some of which are even physically possible within this universe.

For a bit over a year now, one user has been flooding YouTube with videos – over 77,000 of them so far.  They are all 11  seconds long, and consist of a slide show of red and blue rectangles in different positions around the screen,  accompanied by weird beeping sounds.  Admin over at YouTube has no idea who it is, they haven’t been able to trace the owner of theaccount, and the videos just keep on coming, dozens of them every day.

I would like to think that it is the secret code of an international web of super hackers dedicated to keeping the internet free or, as the article suggested, an attempt to contact aliens.

However, more mundane explanations are possible. Maybe this is just the pet project of some super geek, who is doing it essentially because he (or she) can, which would explain the fairly high level of skill (in keeping themselves hidden) coupled with an extreme lack of imagination.

Maybe it was somebody’s class assignment at computer school and they just forgot to turn it off at the end of the semester.

Maybe it is a long term mole of a teaser ad, whose subject is yet to be revealed.

Maybe it is, as a friend of mine suggested, a very subtle IQ test.

Maybe it’s ‘false flag’ advertising on the part of YouTube.  Get everybody speculating  on this, they will be talking about YouTube, and one thing they will be saying is “77,000?  As in Seventy fucking seven thousand?!?”  Which is good advertising for Youtube.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s aliens trying to contact us.  Until we know more, I’m going with that one.

When I first saw “Scientists say small  organisms could survive on Mars” I thought, hah, that’s my idea, glad they’ve finally thought of it.  That is, I’ve always thought it would be a good idea for NASA to take a rocket up to the moon, or Mars, whatever, filled up with garbage, mostly organic garbage.  It would be filled with cockroaches, which can survive damned near everything, and all sorts of other bug life.

Don’t worry, it will take a few million years before they get like that

Never mind that this could clean up the home planet a bit, and since there’s no native population on lifeless planets (which is why they call them lifeless planets), there’s nobody to complain, we can do whatever the hell we like.  In fact, that’s sort of the cool thing about space.  Until we meet up with some other intelligent species, we’ve got free reign and nobody can stop us. Ha!  The main advantage, though, to introducing some small, disgusting life form to a barren environment far from  Earth is simply to prove it could  be done.

It goes beyond looking for life in space.  It’s saying “There WILL be life throughout the universe, even if we have to put it there.”  I like that attitude.

Anyway, the real article was about something a lot less visibly cool but, to be fair, this project is actually designed by people who know what they are doing, of whom I am not one.  They’re going to take stinky little micro-methane-monsters up to Mars, because they reckon they can live there.  Which is awesome.  If they can make it there, they’ll make it anywhere.

I am not an expert on astronomy or electromagnetic wavelengths and all that, but here’s how I think it’s going to go down.  People with  more advanced knowledge of how things actually work may feel free to correct me. 

As scientists discover more and more exoplanets, it seems they are also getting better at discovering Earth sized planets, within the Goldilocks Zone,  that have water.  We are just zipping through the old Drake equation.  Now that we know that such planets exist, it’s reasonable to assume there are billions throughout the galaxy, trillions throughout the universe.

The next step on that equation is the very abstract “on how  many planets that have water will life actually emerge?”  Like is it a fluke thing that just happened to happen on Earth but really is a wild card, a one in a billion shot, or is it something that happens pretty much every time there is water and the temperature is right?

Then, there is the question “out of all planets where life evolves, how many develop technological civilizations?” It’s a reasonable question.  If that meteorite hadn’t wacked the dinosaurs, we would never have evolved.  So, chance plays a role.  But, given enough time, chances become inevitabilities. 

So, I’m pretty convinced intelligent life is out there.

And, given the fact that out own civilization is maybe a couple hundred thousand years old, and discovered TV less than a hundred years ago, and the fact that a technological civilization, once evolved, could last millions or even billions of years, it’s quite likely that any of these planets with intelligent life have been broadcasting for a long, long time.

Even our own TV broadcasts (starting with the 1936 Olympics) may have been received by  some nearby solar systems.  If we focus on a planet we think might have intelligent life, even if they are 900 light years away, shouldn’t we be able to pick up their TV programs?  900 year old programs, to be sure, but still.  It would be very entertaining.

I think it was Carl Sagan who said it was likely that the first extraterrestrial life we would find would be a bacteria of some sort.  I disagree.  I think our first proof of extraterrestrial life will be when we pick up their TV programs.

Living in Prague, I don’t see Cosmos on a regular basis.  I’ve caught parts of it here and there, some highlights, and of course I read recounts of it on the internet.  Like this.

The concept is that since plants are the worlds greatest solar collecting energy generating machines, pound for pound, on the planet, we should figure out how to reverse engineer them and invent artificial photosythesis plants.  It is a technological achievement that will cause great confusion, because you’re talking about using a plants as plants.

I’m all for it, it’s an interesting avenue for science to venture down a bit.   But, I would also like to point out that until such time as we can create artificial plants to serve as energy plants, there is a simple expedient we could use.  It would serve the same purpose, and the raw materials for its production are all around us.

It is the artificial artificial photosynthesis plant.  Until we have invented the real artificial photosynthesis plant, we can just plant huge amounts of plants, mostly trees, because they suck up the most carbon dioxide and also I am quite fond of trees.  They give us shade, and fruit, and nuts, and maple syrup.  They are the dominant species, the natural lords of the planet.  Restore the forests of ancient times.  Yeah, we live in a crowded world.  But until we can get the nasty pollutants out of the air by ourselves, we need to co-exist with the trees.  We need them.  So we should form an alliance.

At least until we can invent the real artificial photosynthesis plant.