I’m glad I lived long enough to see the images taken by the James Webb Telescope. It’s something I’ve been waiting decades for, and I wasn’t disappointed.
I’d go as far as to say that those first pictures gave us a collective time-out to really think about life and our existence in the universe – if only for a moment.
The deep field image is one that I find particularly fascinating. You get a sense of not only how vast the universe is, but that it’s teeming with galaxies, stars, and most likely planets that can sustain life. Our home is located on the arm of one of 2 trillion galaxies that we know of. At this scale, even our milky way, which contains a few hundred billion stars, seems insignificant.
One cannot help but be in awe of the entire concept and it really makes me think about the deep questions of our existence. Where did all this come from? How is it possible that I’m a living, breathing, sentient being who is witnessing all this from my own point of view?
Most of us are so caught up in our daily lives, that we ignore these glaring questions while we deal with work, commuting, family life, etc. It’s as if we’ve adapted so fully to our immediate environment that we forget to question how strange reality actually is.
Here is what I find fascinating:
We are always moving… fast.
We live on a rocky planet. The earth is spinning on its axis at 1,000 mph (1600 km/hr). The earth is held in orbit by the sun while completing a full orbit in 365 days at 67,000 mph (108,000 km/hr). Our solar system orbits the milky way galaxy at 448,000 mph (720,000 km/hr). The milky way itself is hurtling through space at 1.3 million mph (2.1 million kph). Yet we feel nothing and are completely oblivious to all this motion. Right now, I’m sitting at my desk and it is dead silent. It’s peaceful and serene, yet in the back of my mind, i know I am anything but still. It’s all relative though.
The more I think about it, the more I want to scream, WTF is going on and what am I doing here?!! But that’s just me.
The universe is extremely wasteful.
I don’t mean wasteful in the sense that things are not reused, etc. In fact, everything on earth is recycled back to base elements in a very efficient manner. I am talking about how there are solar systems that probably don’t have life. The star burns bright and puts out all kinds of energy, only to be wasted in space, or heating barren worlds.
We are conditioned to value things here on earth. Energy, for example is valuable because it requires limited resources to create. Energy and heat are tangible commodities.
Imagine a star, bigger than ours, that burns for billions of years, only to have its energy wasted on a handful of barren planets. Doesn’t make sense. But that is because we are conditioned to look at resources according to our lives here on earth. We live lives of scarcity, for the most part.
And speaking of waste: There are apparently asteroids that are made of so much heavy/precious metal that it would make each person on earth a billionaire. 16-Psyche is such an asteroid. It’s worth 10,000 trillion USD. LOL! Talk about a waste, but again, it’s all relative. Introducing that into our economy would render precious metals not so precious anymore.
Where are the intelligent aliens?
The milky way has 200 billion stars, give or take. While some may not have planetary systems, most do, and of those, you would think some would harbour intelligent life. And that is only in our galaxy. There are over 2 trillion other galaxies out there, many of which are larger than ours.
So where is everyone?
Given that the universe is almost 14 billion years old, you’d think there’d be enough time for something to evolve into an intelligent species. After all, the earth is only 4.5 billion years old and here we are. Imagine if we had another few billion years? In that time, we could become masters of the galaxy and beyond – almost god-like in a sense.
Yet, there is nothing but crickets.
Some argue that the speed of light is a limiting factor, but I can’t help but feel that it could be overcome in a billion years of technological evolution.
You would think that there would be some signs of life out there, but there is none. Stars, planets, supernovas, black holes, neutron stars, are all doing their thing, but not a hint of civilization anywhere. Could it be that we are too primitive to detect life out there? Maybe; or maybe the sheer size of the universe keeps everyone in their own neighbourhood. But again, 10 billion years of evolution should create super advanced beings in some planetary system within 2 trillion galaxies. It’s impossible not to if you think about it.
Or we could be living in a simulation where information is rendered as needed. Or perhaps there is a darker reason; a hurdle (which we are unaware) that advanced civilizations just can’t get over.
I’ll go into depth on these in the next article.
