We are not special

The more we learn and the better our technology advances the more we realize that we are not special. Some find that bit disheartening, I however find it beautiful.

Throughout history humans have been clinging to the notion that we were special in the eyes of the cosmos. We used to think that the stars were static and were the realm of the mighty Gods. We used to think that our planet was the center and everything revolved around us. Then we realized that no the Earth is not the center, we are just a planet like the rest of them and we orbit the Sun too, just like everything else in the Solar System.

Then we thought maybe our galaxy was special, that our Milky Way was the only special galaxy and it was the entire Universe. Then we realized those fuzzy blobs in early telescopes weren't nebulae within our special galaxy, they were OTHER galaxies. Then we build Hubble to take a look at things we could never see here on Earth. An Astronomer had the radical idea to just point the thing at a random patch of black sky. People criticized him saying they were wasting telescope time and wasting money looking at "nothing". When the image came back the world was shocked. In a tiny patch of black sky Hubble saw 10,000 galaxies....

Then we said well only our special star has planets orbiting around it. Then a few decades ago we discovered other stars with planets around them. Alright well our special star is the only one with rocky planets orbiting around it, nobody else has those. Then our technology got better, we launched Kepler to take a look and were shocked to realize that other stars have rocky planets too. Not just a couple stars but almost ALL OF THEM have "solar systems".

I think humans are engineered to believe that we hold a special place in the Universe, that we are unique, and we have been trying desperately to hold on to that title in some form throughout history. The more we learn the more we realize that we are not special at all.

Our star is a normal middle aged Class G2 yellow dwarf star. There is nothing particularly special about it, there are hundreds of millions of other ones just like it in our galaxy alone. Our galaxy is nothing particularly special. It's just a normal spiral galaxy of which there are billions of others. Sure it's slightly larger than many others but it's not exactly abnormal. It's like walking down the street and seeing a 6'4 person. Nothing that would really make you do a double take or anything.

Now we have the huge elephant in the room that we think makes us special, VERY SPECIAL. We're the only planet with life on it.....

That we know of....at one point we used to think we were the only PLANET, then the only solar system, then the only galaxy, and we have been wrong each and every time.

To quote my old Astronomy teacher from oh so many years ago, "Space is STUPID huge". Most people can't even begin to comprehend just how big our own Solar System actually is, let alone our galaxy. We start talking about the scale of the Universe and the human brain just simply wasn't equipped to comprehend distances like that. When Astronomers theorized about that hypothetical Planet X a few months ago I went on multiple forums and just sort of laughed inside at the comments most people were making. "How the hell do you miss an entire planet in the Solar System..." Those comments stem from the average person who has no idea just how huge the Solar System is. Not their fault of course, but that's my point.

Sadly now Science is hitting a roadblock. There is only so much you can see from our vantage point here on Earth because space is...STUPID huge. James Webb is going to launch in 2018 and see farther than we have ever seen before, but there is going to come a point where we just simply can't see any farther than that due to the light horizon. Plus we have a cosmic speed limit called the speed of light...The other HUGE roadblock.

We can see all of the Earth-Like Planets we want sitting comfortably smack in the middle of their goldilocks zone's but the fact is that these things are WAY THE HELL out there. We simply can't go anywhere near fast enough to even remotely come close to logically sending something over there to check it out. All we can do is look at it.

So sadly we have hit a roadblock, one that scientists are frantically trying to figure out a way to cross. Trying to figure out wormholes or some sort of warp drives or other things that are deemed impossible but we humans don't like hearing that word. So we keep trying to figure it out. It may prove to actually be impossible which will forever leave us sitting here wondering if anybody is sitting on that blue and green planet in the Gliese System staring back at us saying the same thing.

Every time we have thought we were special we have proven ourselves wrong. I think our little planet having life on it is no different. The problem this time is that this is the one question we very well may not be able to ever answer. But if history has proven one thing, we are always wrong when we think we are special.

I've heard the theories about how some Scientists believe life here on Earth is the result of a super complex series of events that happened at just the right time and it would be very hard for lightening to strike twice. I listen to that and just laugh. This Universe of ours is ridiculously huge and expanding faster than the speed of light. The Universe is expanding faster than we can see it expanding because it's expanding faster than the light that is trying to reach us. Due to the calculations of how fast it is expanding and how fast it expanded shortly after the Big Bang scientists came up with a rough estimate of how big they actually think it is now.

The size of the actual Universe to the Observable Universe is comparable to what the Observable Universe is to an....ATOM.

And to me that is fascinating.

 

I wasn't saying "we aren't special" in a negative way. Some may take it as such but to me it's more of a positive.

I'm different when it comes to that sort of thing. I don't want to be "exceptional" in the grand scheme of the cosmos. It would be 10x more fascinating for me if we humans figured out that the Earth is just a random planet out here over figuring out that we are the only planet with life on it.

Thats why I am so eager and excited for NASA to send a lander to Jupiter's moon Europa. Scientists believe there is an entire ocean under that crust of ice and it's one of the most likely candidates in our Solar System to find life. It would likely be single cell organisms or something but either way that would fascinate me. I am really hoping that NASA can figure out a way to send a probe there to drill through that ice before I die.

I'd love nothing more than to just have a way to find out. Turn magic or something and teleport out to some of these Exoplanets we are discovering and see what's hanging out on them. Or have a map of our galaxy or even our Universe magically appear in my hands with arrows pointing to all of the other places where there is life. Have a caption at the bottom saying something like "Here are the places where life exists in the Universe. You will never break the speed of light barrier, it is impossible, all of you will live and die having never come in contact with one another or even being aware that each other exist. But just know, none of you are actually alone in the Universe"

That would literally bring tears to my eyes. Not because I'd be sad knowing we'd never meet each other, but just simply because I would know they were out there, somewhere.

Just to know that somewhere out there, possibly billions of light years away, there is "someone" or "something" who is also staring up at the night sky wondering whether or not I exist sitting over here on my computer on my little blue planet.

I sit here quite often and read the data that Kepler sends back on Exoplanets. I look at the artist renditions of them and get super excited when they actually snap extremely blurry tiny single pixel pictures of Exoplanets that look like nothing but a hazy dot. I sit here and wonder if there is someone or something living on that Exoplanet who too launched something like a Kepler space telescope. I wonder if maybe they pointed it our direction once and are too looking at an extremely blurry tiny single pixel dot and asking themselves "Hmm, that planet sort of looks like ours, I wonder if anybody lives on that thing?"

I'd love nothing more than to be able to just magically wave my hands and scream "YES!!!!". I sit around and think about things like that all the time and it always makes me smile. I love this stuff.

 

Well that's why I said what I said in my OP. We may very well never figure out whether or not planet Earth is the only planet with life on it or not. Unless we find some sort of life in our own Solar System then the odds of us ever actually finding life dwindle down to almost zero due to the limitations of the speed of light and our propulsion systems that can't get us anywhere even close to that. There is a very real possibility that our own backyard of the Solar System is the farthest that we humans will ever go or be able to send anything we make. Yeah Voyager is "technically" outside of the Solar System depending on which definition you use but either way that thing is now in interstellar space and it wouldn't even bump into our nearest star neighbor for about 76,000 years if it were actually going that way.

That's why I mentioned Europa, a moon in our Solar System which is actually feasible to visit by man made probes. If we discovered life on Europa or maybe even in the new water they found on Mars then that would confirm that the Earth isn't the only planet with life on it. It would also basically confirm that life isn't even rare seeing how we have it on 3 bodies in our own Solar System alone. It would stand reasonable to assume that if our own Solar System had advanced life on one planet and microbial life on a few other planets and moons then a lot of those other Solar Systems out there probably have at least microbial life too. Maybe even a few intelligent civilizations scattered around there somewhere.

Sort of like standing on the shores of the Pacific Ocean and catching a fish. Catch a fish right there on the shore line then look out and see a huge ocean then it would be reasonable to assume that there are probably more fish living in that huge ocean than just the one hanging out by the shore line. Of course there is a possibility that you really did catch the only fish in the entire ocean, but that just doesn't seem reasonable.

Thats the issue with wondering about life in the Universe. The Universe is just huge and it has a cosmic speed limit. We're basically trapped in our tiny corner of it unless we humans figure out how to make something like Alcubierre warp drives. Propulsion systems that many scientists who are way smarter than I am are saying isn't actually possible to make given our current laws of physics.

So it boils down to the fact that we just don't know and since we theoretically can never leave our own front yard we may actually never know.

When it comes to the glaringly obvious alternative as you said, that's an alternative that I will never accept as an absolute truth. Mainly because we simply don't have enough evidence to support such a claim. That would basically be like me living alone on a deserted island and saying there are no other people on the planet because I can't see anybody else and I can't get off of the thing.

Now the same can be said about the position that I hold myself. I can't say for sure that the Earth is NOT the only planet with life on it as an absolute truth because I simply have no idea, neither does anybody else, I can only assume because we don't have enough data to support that claim. But when I understand the sheer size of the Universe itself I just have a hard time believing that this tiny blue planet orbiting this normal yellow dwarf star in a normal spiral galaxy in a normal super cluster in a HUGE Universe is the ONLY planet that has ANY life on it all.

I just can't believe that. My brain won't allow me to because to me that just wouldn't make sense. Whenever I think about that I always think well if the entire Universe was created purely by nature, or by God, or some other form of Gods, or a combination of all of those or whatever, and this little planet is the only one with life on it then what the hell is the rest of it there for? That would be like creating the entire planet Earth for one single Ant to live on in a shoebox in Colorado. That doesn't make sense to me.

 

Sure I'm always looking for a conversation. I was mainly wondering what other folks thought about what I said and my reasons for believing what I do. Do they agree? Disagree? Why or why not? Etc.

I posted a similar topic a few years ago on here and it sparked quite a lengthy discussion. I guess there are less people interested in Astronomy now than we had back then.

 

Now I see what's going on here.... I was wondering why you kept responding to my replies the way you were. But to be 100% honest no this wasn't a slick attempt for a God vs Science debate or anything at all whatsoever to do with religion. But no I honestly didn't see how the opening sentence of my OP could be seen as making this more than just astronomy. Not until you just pointed that out.

Thanks for pointing that out though. I'm not a religious person so I don't really understand or fully grasp some of the key words or key talking points that might catch the eye of religious folks.

I apologize, I didn't mean to offend or make it seem like I was implying to offend or anything like that. I was merely sitting on my couch daydreaming about this stuff like I tend to do from time to time and thought it would be interesting to share my thoughts on the forum to see what others might think.

When I say "We aren't special" I'm not talking about it in a religious sense or anything like that. I was talking about it like "we aren't unique" or "the only one" as in our planet isn't the only planet and neither is our Sun or galaxy. I wasn't saying that as a pseudo jab at religion.

 

I'm not really sure honestly, that was part of the reason I made the thread.

I am a member of an Astronomy forum and have been for years and I also frequent the space reddit almost daily. I remember a few years ago when Astronomers confirmed the first discovery of an Earth-like planet orbiting in the "goldilocks" zone of it's parent star. While many people were thrilled with such a discovery there were also quite a few folks who were not.

I don't know, perhaps it stemmed from our place as humans here on Earth. We are the dominant species here on Earth and we enjoy our role as head honcho here on our own planet. Maybe some people want to hold on to that title and extend it beyond the Earth as well. A few science documentaries touch on this subject as well. Are we humans just one of billions of other intelligent beings in the Universe who don't really play any significant role in the grand scheme of things? Or are we the first ones to evolve to our current state of understanding and it's our job as humans to go out and colonize the cosmos and get off of our little planet where we started?

I guess that sort of makes sense. I can equate that to the early western explorers of planet Earth who wanted to reach out and explore and "discover" the new world on the other side of the ocean only to arrive there and see that there are hundreds of civilizations already there.

I think its in our blood as human beings to believe ourselves special because in all reality we kind of are, at least as far as we know here on Earth. No other animal can do what we do. No other animal has the ability to even understand that the Universe is there let alone build machines to send to distant planets and build machines to talk about it on the internet. Nothing else on Earth even remotely comes close to us human beings. Scientists are always trying to judge how intelligent animals are on Earth compared to humans and the second place runner up after us humans are Chimps who are roughly equal to that of a mentally handicapped 2 year old human being. Nothing else on Earth is like us at all. Not even close.

We are the smartest most complex living organisms that we know of by a long shot. And lets face it thats a pretty nice title to have. I think that the discovery of other worlds out there that look like ours has raised some questions in peoples minds about if we are still king of the jungle. What if there are species living on these distant planets? What if they got a head start on us humans in terms of evolution? Maybe even a tiny head start like 1000 years. Look at how far we humans have come in the past 100 years, let along 1000 years. Then think about how we will be 1000 years from now in the year 3016. The show Star Trek takes place in the 2300's, 300 years from now. Sure it's sci fi but what if we actually advanced to that point by then?

But even look at Star Trek, a sci fi show that portrayed us Humans as just one of hundreds of similarly advanced species living in our galaxy. We weren't the most powerful or the most advanced in that series, but look at where the writers of that show put the headquarters of the United Federation of Planets. They put it here on Earth. We may not be the most advanced or most powerful but we want to be important and play a big role. So the HQ of the biggest faction in Star Trek will be located here on our home world. That's how human beings think, we want to be important.

In Star Trek us humans were behind the power curve here on Earth. For hundreds of years Alien civilizations were zipping around the galaxy interacting with each other and completely ignoring us here on Earth because we weren't advanced enough for them to care about us yet. Then we developed warp speed and the Vulcans saw that and came over and said "hey guys, welcome to the club...You're late".

I think some people would have an issue with that. We don't want to be behind the power curve we want to be the first ones to do something like that. We want to be the advanced species who first reaches out towards the stars and colonizes the cosmos. I think Manifest Destiny is in our blood. We like being king of the mountain, and if we figure out what we aren't it might make some people unhappy.

Plus the whole premise of Aliens scares the crap out of a lot of people. Before 20 years ago everything we ever said about Aliens was 100% pure fantasy in books and movies and whatnot. We didn't know there were even other planets out there before then, we just guessed to make up a spooky story. Now that we have confirmed Exoplanets out there that has also spooked quite a few people because there may very well be something living on those planets. And Hollywood is famous for almost always portraying aliens as evil beings who want to come abduct us or kill us all or something. Even Stephen Hawking said it wasn't really a good idea for scientists to draw a map on the Voyager spacecraft showing where that probe came from just in case of the off chance some aliens actually find that thing and come back here to visit us.

Even NASA had a legitimate discussion about what they would actually do if they ever discovered a real Alien civilization. Would it be a good idea to share that information to the public or would it cause mass hysteria and freak way too many people out? I for one would be absolutely thrilled, but I know for a fact that many other people would panic for a variety of reasons.

 

Yeah I've seen the studies from those scientists who believe Earth is an anomaly. They may very well be right, I just doubt it. We aren't even sure exactly how life got here in the first place. Did it start here on Earth? Did an asteroid bring it here?

There are plenty of things in the Universe that we can't duplicate in a lab, we can see it but we just don't know how it works. Take Dark Energy for example. We know it's there we just don't know exactly what it is and have no idea how to even begin to try to duplicate it in a lab. Same with the speed of light barrier. We know that photons travel at the speed of light but we just don't know how to make anything with mass do that. Traveling faster than the speed of light IS possible, we can see it happening, the Universe itself is expanding faster than the speed of light and we can see that. But we just don't understand how it's doing that.

Humans are smart, smarter than anything else that we know of by a long shot. But just because we can't recreate something doesn't mean nature can't do it. For tens of thousands of years we humans looked up at birds and saw them flying around but we didn't understand how they could do that and it wasn't until a little over a hundred years ago that we finally figured it out ourselves. Meanwhile nature figured out how to make things fly hundreds of millions of years before we even got here.

Humans are pretty darn smart in the year 2016 but we still don't know very much about the Universe. Just because we haven't yet figured out how to recreate life in a lab doesn't mean it's necessarily "hard", it simply means we haven't figured it out yet. Flying used to be "hard" to figure out too but once we understood how it worked it wasn't that hard anymore. It took humans thousands of years to figure that out. Then one day somebody slapped some wings on a carriage and stuck a motor on it and "Eureka!" it's flying. Not very well but it worked. Fast forward 15 years and we had fighter planes and bombers, fast forward 45 years after that and we have a man in space.

I believe that when it comes to figuring out how life is created we just haven't found our "Eureka!" moment yet. And if/once we do it'll simply be "oh...so that's how it works".

I'm also a super optimist when it comes to this sort of thing man so you'll have to forgive me lol

 

I think another thing to consider is the fact that we really don't even understand what life is or where it can exist. We only have one template to use as a guide which is our own home planet. As we can see life can vary pretty greatly here on Earth.

I've always pondered this. What is Earth is an anomaly but not because we are the only planet with life but the only planet like ours with life. Us carbon based oxygen breathing organisms. What if life usually exists in Gas Giants more often than it does on rocky worlds? That would be like us humans completely ignoring the oceans on Earth when looking for life because since we can't live in there we assume nothing else can either. We tend to surprise ourselves quite often in that regard. Finding life near thermal vents at the deepest parts of the oceans shocked the scientific community because we didn't think it was possible.

It only makes logical sense for us to use our own template to go by when searching for life because we are the only confirmed case and the rest is just speculation. We have to start somewhere. So of course we look for planets or moons that are similar to the conditions we have here. Thats why NASA is researching ways to drill through the ice on Europa because they believe an ocean lies beneath, and we have oceans here. Nobody would fund a project to search for life on Jupiter itself because thats just a huge shot in the dark.

We are still in an infant stage of understanding the Universe. We know quite a lot but the more we learn the more we realize just how little we actually know. Simply measuring the light from objects in the Universe provides loads of information but we have to remember that almost everything we know about comes from light or some form of x-rays, gamma rays, UV, microwaves, etc. All stuff that we can detect by sitting here on Earth. In order to truly understand the Universe we are eventually going to have to move past that. We can sit here and look at Europa all day, send satellites to it, maybe even send a lander with sonar, but if we really want to see whats under that ice eventually we're going to have to send something there to drill through it and drop a submarine down the hole and look.