bile said:
I dont really see the big deal ... We are on a rock swinging around a ball of gas, in the middle of an endless ocean of rocks swinging around other balls of gas, and some flinging around randomly..
Tbh .. Its if there are no other forms of life out there ... then what a waste of space.
Statistically ... Being that the Universe never ends ... there is a 100% chance of there being another planet exactly the right distance from the right sun, to support life
the odds of us finding running into another intelligent life form is slim to none, by the time we are capable of Traveling the amount of distance it would require to find another suitable planet for life, we will all be dead. and it wont matter
And tbh If i was an alien ... and I saw this planet .. id be like ... woah man **** that. Cause those crazy humans are all about probing dead aliens, and bad stuff.
Finding micro-organisms to me is not suprising at all... In order have an atmosphere you pretty much need microscopic organisms... and even then ... possibilities of space are completly endless, and you could litterally hurt your brain trying to think of them all. id say to not really worry about it. Its just a cool idea,
We will be loooong since dead by the time the human race is even remotly capable of interacting with anything out of our own solar system.
1. As Zeo already stated: Yes the Universe does end. Try to keep up with astronomy -.- We know this because like I said earlier the big bang theory is still taking effect. Now if that's true, then the outter most part of the universe (the oldest part) is expanding making room for the new part. That means it has to end. Again as Zeo stated.
As for us not having the technology to travel such distances.... wrong again. We have the technology. We have batteries that can run for 10 years or more with out dying out. We have solar powered equipment. We have a fuel source so great that a pound of plutonium is equal to that of 1 million pounds of coal. And it lasts for 20 or so years.
Don't tell me we can't travel the speed of light or faster, or don't have the technology. What we don't have is fuel. Our rockets use Hydrogen. And finding raw hydrogen is hard to find. Sure we can take water, or soap or anything that has a **** load of hydrogens and split the molecule to get the raw element, but the energy required to that is incredibly hard to do, expensive, and requires more energy than it's worth. With enough fuel, we can easily reach and go beyond the speed of light. It's the acceleration that's hard to do. It's the same as turning an F-18 at a 45º angle going 100 mph. The jet can handle it, the human body can't the blood would rush out of your head and you'd pass out. We can reach the speed of light, but we can't go from 0 to 3 x 10^8 m/s in 3 seconds. It has to be gradual.
But the problem with all this is leaving our atmosphere. In order to leave our atmosphere you need enough fuel. But then you need a bigger body to hold the fuel. Well that bigger body makes it weigh more, so you add more fuel, increasing the size. Etc etc. So we can only hold so much. We can easily leave our solar system. We saw a satelite do it in 70 or so years. We can easliy do it in 1 or 2 years if we had the fuel to do it. And of course there is the money issue.
With space having no friction what so ever, the law (i forgot the name of it) an object in motion will stay in motion unless another force is acted upon. Well if you can stay clear of planets, or stars, or anything else with a gravitational pull, and keep your rockets fired, you'll go faster and faster and faster and you won't stop going faster until you turn the boosters off. Reaching 30,000,000,000 m/s wouldn't be so hard if we had the fuel.
If we encountered an actual alien... we wouldn't kill it and experiment it. We'd try to interact with it. If we found it dead... yes we would perform and autopsy. Don't jump to conclusions based on watching the movie Independance Day.
Btw: the nearest star (revolving around ever star are planets= a solar system) is Alpha Centuri (unless they found a closer one) which I believe is 4.3 light years away. Considering how far other solar systems and galaxies are, that's INCREDIBLY close.
::EDIT::
My bad. The closest star is Proxima Centuri which is 4.2 light years away. If we can travel the speed of light, we can go to another solar system in 4 years.