I've always been fascinated planets and things in space.  A recent History channel documentary discussed the Big Bang theory and how a multitude of scientists led us to the realization that the universe started around 13.7 billion years ago and our solar system started around 4 billion years ago.  The show ended with the theory that our solar system is doomed in about 5 billion years...the earth, like the other planets closest to the sun, will eventually drift towards the sun and burn up.

The destruction is a long time from now and it obviously won't affect me.  Heck, the world will probably be destroyed by humanity's stupidity long before then.  Or, in 5 billion years, man will find ways of reaching and inhabiting distant solar systems.  Still, our solar system's demise came as a sad surprise.  Whether it's by "intelligent design" or by evolutionary accident, I kind of hoped we were meant to be here -- that human society had a purpose other than being a momentary flash in the timeline of the universe.

I truly enjoy looking up at night and seeing the stars.  The light from them, so they say, is like looking into the past.  I think of the ancients and how a few people like Copernicus and Galileo challenged the common agreed-upon principle: the planets and sun rotate around the earth.  That Galileo, a Catholic, was forced by the Inquisition to live out his last days under house arrest seems unbelievable.  Stephen Hawking and Einstein both consider him to be the father of modern science and physics.  And since Galileo, it's truly remarkable what unrelenting scientists have come up with -- the idea, for example, that you can tell how far a galaxy is by how bright it is -- amazing.

As TS's are faced with fighting today's preconceptions/stereotypes regarding gender, I think of brave people like Galileo.  And when I look up at the stars, I think of the magic of all that we don't know yet in the universe.

What is magical to you?

Teri Anne

Hi Teri Anne

My belief is that once one gets into the quantum physics of the structure of this universe down to it's tiniest particles, but then what is or how do you define the tiniest particles? At the level of the tiniest particle the space in between atoms become like an immense empty voids between other tiny particles where the process repeats itself again and again ad infinitum. Each just like their larger replica.  *In relativity* that is. I also believe that metaphysics follows not far behind quantum physics, actually even may walk hand in hand with one another.

As for the big bang I would have to say that some type of intelligence had to have been it's creation. Everything that we now see in the universe was in the primordial soup of the big bang, everything was there to create what we see in the universe today  galaxies, stars , and planets all living things all the way on down to the amoeba. For several decades it was predicted that the rotation of the galaxies around the universal center would slow down and eventually fall back to the universal center. Well now I believe it was Mr Hawkins himself and other researchers have discovered that this was not so. That universe is indeed still expanding outwards and at an increasing speed

Now what is this phenomena that is causing this which for many centuries astronomers believed  was supposed to be the reverse of what is taking place today? Large masses of dark energy, they call it. They call it dark energy because they can not detect it even with the most advanced observatories we have today. They discovered this phenomena by what they call inference. How one body affects another.  So it appears that this dark energy is repelling the galaxies away from the Universal center.  If this is so then all the galaxies and stars we see out there today will simply drift apart and fade away into the infinite cosmos.

All of this reality is but a flash in time but what about the metaverses and multiple universes infinite in their number. The tiny microbes they call humans on this planet may very well destroy them selves and the planet, but intelligent sentient beings will always be around.

Thank you much Teri Ann for the mental gymnastics, Cindy takes hat with long plume off and bows respectably to Teri Ann 
I was hopping to run into one of your postings. 

Cindy

Einstein believed in a unified theory in a spiritual sense, which under vague interpretation could be considered God.
We are limited in our creativity to our experience and all recorded from those before us. Our senses are not equipped to recognize other things that are happening in our sphere and beyond. Where evidence leaves off imagination forges on. But even imagination is limited. Perhaps the universe is not limited. The string theory has a interesting idea that there are 6 more dimensions but we have no way at the present time of detecting them. The best I can do is admit that there are things I do not know and be open to understanding them.

Thank you Cindy and Lisagurl for your insightful postings.  I marvel at how intelligent many TS's are, contrary to television's stereotypes.

Cindy, I agree with you that the only logical conclusion we can make is that there was "some type of intelligence" behind the universe's creation.  The world is just too complex, too beautiful for random evolution alone to do this.  Some scientists say, "but you're not taking into account that it's 13.7 billion years of universe evolution."  I'm not convinced.  Though I don't have strong faith (and particularly don't like organized religions), I can't understand, if random evoloution of billions of years is responsible, why is earth seems like such an anomaly?  Granted, there could be millions of other earth-like planets in other galaxies but, given they may have started a one to nine billion years before us (given our solar system is 4 billion years old and the universe is 13.7 billion years old), why aren't they broadcasting their existence? 

Scientists seem to agree that the universe started as a very small, very dense, very heavy object in the middle of nothing (??).  What was this nothing?  Do scientists attempt to explaini this?  Why did the universe BANG?  Why bang then? -- why not earlier or later?  I guess wondering about this stuff is like the "chicken and the egg question, which came first?"  The biggest puzzle to me is the lack of theories as to what happened BEFORE the big bang.  I wonder if there was a universe BEFORE our universe -- it collapsed into a ball and then re-exploded into what we term "the big bang."  If that were true, maybe there has always been a universe.

The documentary I mentioned showed how the scientists were able to tell, by measuring distance of galaxies, that the universe is expanding.  Because it's expanding, I guess that distant galaxies we may want to reach someday are getting further and further away.  But we'll probably figure out the time/energy thing, lol.

Lisagurl, you mentioned how our senses are not equipped to recognize a lot of things.  Yes, I've wondered why we got more than some creatures and less than others.  Perhaps we don't need the eyesight of an eagle to survive, but wouldn't a cro-magnin man with better eyesight or faster feet have caught his lunch animal easier and thus survived better than the slower near-sighted cro-magnin?  And why is it that some animals are able to regrow arms/legs while we cannot.  Why didn't evolution give us that talent, also?

You say you admit to not knowing some things but are open to understanding them.  Bill Maher quoted Bertrand Russell on his Sept. 7 show:

"Bertrand Russell said, "The trouble with the world is the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt." And then rewrote that quote 56 more times. Doubt, for lack of a better word, is good. It suits human nature. Doubt is what makes you careful. Doubt is what makes you open to change. Doubt is why Eddie Murphy took a DNA test."

Teri Anne

Quote from: Teri Anne on September 12, 2007, 12:47:23 PM
Cindy, I agree with you that the only logical conclusion we can make is that there was "some type of intelligence" behind the universe's creation.  The world is just too complex, too beautiful for random evolution alone to do this.  Some scientists say, "but you're not taking into account that it's 13.7 billion years of universe evolution."  I'm not convinced.  Though I don't have strong faith (and particularly don't like organized religions), I can't understand, if random evoloution of billions of years is responsible, why is earth seems like such an anomaly?  Granted, there could be millions of other earth-like planets in other galaxies but, given they may have started a one to nine billion years before us (given our solar system is 4 billion years old and the universe is 13.7 billion years old), why aren't they broadcasting their existence? 

I would agree with you except that evolution is not random...

I don't think there was any intelligence behind the creation of the universe for the same reason you think there is. The universe is too complicated, and too beautiful for intelligence to have created it.
I don't think earth is such an anomaly either. It is not like we can go out and see what all the other planets are like. If there were 'aliens' and they had the technology to reach us then I think we would be nothing more than bugs to them and beneath their notice.


My theory is that if you could magnify things enough you would see another universe, and that if you could view enough of our universe at once you would see that our universe is just a particle in a glass of water within another universe.

Hi NickSister

Ok now you took the words right out of my mouth about aliens and bugs, I believe much of your theory is quite possible but have we not already in the past century, at least documented, had many observations of phenomena's that defy our understanding? But then we do not know where these phenomena come from. They could just as easily be from another reality in another dimension or from some distant planet out there in another galaxy. Either way they would have the intelligence and technology so far more advanced then us that they could have the capability to travel through time and space or interdenominationaly in energy form instantaneously. Most reports of sightings of this nature these objects appear to not be completely solid, like they were more of energy than solid.

I do like your theory about a perpetual universe but then as complex as the universe is and as to how harmonious everything works. A star grows old dies and goes supernova, then a giant gas nebula is formed where in new stars are born. A constant recycling? I agree but for a system so complex as the universe is would it be impossible for it to come about randomly or by chance? Maybe the universe itself is the intelligence that keeps all things within itself in harmony.

Has anyone heard of supervised evolution? How would you explain how all the right elements and chemical compositions required to even make a simple once celled amoeba? How did all these elements of life or seeds of life find a world with the right elements just right to support life and thrive and evolve? You want to bet there are other planets out there that have the right environment to support life on. It is theorised that even if there was only one such planet in each galaxy we see out there had one such planet they would number in the billions.

I have also read about another theory of how the big bang came about. Parallel universes in collision. The multi verses would number at least as much as there are dimensions which no one as yet is certain about that. Some say there are 9 dimensions in a cosmic string, others theorise there might be as many as 32 dimensions in a string. Well what about infinite dimensions?

I like the theory of the universe collapsing into a very dense ball which eventually becomes so dense that it can only go two ways, collapse in on itself and create a super black hole or like a star going nova, explodes outwards once more. I am not going to get into black holes, but I have many different theories I have drawn about them through the years. Isn't it great to be retired? gives one more time to follow up on this kind of thing. The only problem is finding people that can follow you down that rabbit hole.

Our senses to be able to experience these things are only hampered by how deep down the rabbit hole are you ready to go. There are a few people in this world that are quite, not just knowledgeable of these phenomena but are actually tuned into them and yet we are only still observing the tip of the ice berg.

I have another group whose members are mostly GG's and even myself I was surprised how tuned in those girls are.

Doubt is the biggest downfall of us all, doubt blocks the light of understanding and enlightenment. There cannot be positive thoughts and enlightenment in the same room as doubt. 

Cynthia       

We developed wits which lead us to survival without other special talents.  I had Carl Sagan for a class at SUNY SB called "Intelligent life in the Universe". He explained that there had to be life in places with similar conditions as ours. Perhaps they do not have to have transmitters that work like ours with magnetic waves. Plus the Universe is so large that it would take billions of years to search the whole thing for a signal. We just have not found anything yet. We have found other planets around other suns.

Hi lisagurl
Goodness I hate typo's especially when one misses them on the reread.

Adaptation. Goodness knows, just a little trip into fantasy. This planet becomes unlivable and we move to Mars and somehow return it to it's original state, a water world and we all evolve into mermaids, now that's a nice thought but proves a point about adaptation. Even in the Bible in Revelations it talks about a new earth and a new heavens. Hmmmm. makes you wonder. There are just to many synchronisities that take place each day to be discarded as chance happenings. I believe that if we were all to learn how to connect on the grid this new Earth and and Heavens could be manifested with the power of our own minds. Even right now, how much of the future are we manifesting through our own decisions that we make today?

No they would not need transmitters, as I metioned above they may have been communicating with us for millenniums through our own thoughts, We would only need to still our minds and listen to the little voice within. We are all connected as one within the Onenes of universe including any other intelligent life forms out there.

Cynthia

Posted on: September 12, 2007, 06:11:34 PM

---

There is also all that radio static noise from the stars and galaxies that this static noise would do a pretty good job of scattering an intelligent radio wave and even filtering out the static, how much would be left that is decipherable? Also it would take a radio wave millions of years to reach a distant planet in another galaxy and then take into consideration that one is actually seeing that galaxy from millions of years in the past. That planet may have long been laid to waste and no intelligent life remains there. One would have a better chance if they were to point their radio telescopes towards the inner galaxies, the ones further into the universal center where the planetary systems there would be much younger.

Cynthia

Posted on: September 12, 2007, 06:35:07 PM

---

Our own radio signals from their earliest broadcasts may be just about now reaching the closest star to us, Proxima Centauri. Prauxima Centauri children maybe just now be sitting down to what ever approximation to TV they have watching the first release of Mickey Mouse.  "hee, hee."

Cindy

I like a little humor to.

I think that, at any rate, it is unlikely there ever will be a scientific answer to a lot of that. It is pop-enlightenment gibberish to think that one day, scientists will answer everything. If you asked any cosmologist whether they thought they could tell you what came "before" the Big Bang, they'd stare at you as if you had two heads. (hint, there is no before; time is a property of the universe.)

Science and theology are separate disciplines. Religions do not "disprove" science, nor does science disprove religion. Any good scientist will surely tell you that any new knowledge gained by science opens a whole pandora's box full of new questions. The more we know, the more fully we are aware of how small our pool of knowledge truly is.

Science will not disprove faith. Faith is starved of its value when literalists and syncretists wrongly cast it at odds with science. As Einstein himself said, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

Cynthia, you said it would "take a radio wave MILLIONS of years to reach a distant planet in another galaxy and then take into consideration that one is actually seeing that galaxy from MILLIONS of years in the past."

But that's just MILLIONS of years for the radio waves to reach us -- as I mentioned, it could be that the earliest planets in the universe were formed 9 BILLION years before us (being the universe is 13.7 billion years old and we're only 4 billion)
I say to them, what's the holdup, lol?

You may have a point about there being a lot of radio noise that might interfere.  But, if that's the case, why are scientists still listening?  They must have hope.

Cynthia, you said you were "retired."  Did you work in the scientific field?  You seem to know a lot about it.

Nicksister, you said, "If there were 'aliens' and they had the technology to reach us then I think we would be nothing more than bugs to them and beneath their notice."

Perhaps.  I just note that our cleverest minds at Nasa would be EXTREMELY excited to find even a one-celled animal on Mars or one of Jupiter's moons.  Scientists love scientific discovery -- they don't need to talk to the bugs to find them fascinating.  Heck, even discovery of a dry lake bed makes their day.

Butterfly, you mentioned, "If you asked any cosmologist whether they thought they could tell you what came "before" the Big Bang, they'd stare at you as if you had two heads. (hint, there is no before; time is a property of the universe.)"

Again, perhaps.  But no scientist ever WENT anywhere without pondering possibilities.  Scientists like to seek things they can PROVE so, if they can't find any CSI evidence to lead them into a certain direction then, yes, it's like you say -- they're stopped dead.

Some of you have mentioned the world inside a world thing.  I'm sure that many of you have pondered that possibility even though we have yet to SEE it.  I do remember a lot of "Twilight Zone" episodes dealt with life or worlds in different dimensions.  A show waaaay ahead of its time.

A general question:  What is the easiest way to learn planets/stars/navigation? I thought I heard of some toy recently that you align to certain coordinates and it can then tell you where all the stars and mythological things (like the big dipper) are.  How did you learn star navigation?

Then, when I get my sailboat, we can follow the stars.  All aboard!

Teri Anne

Quote from: Teri Anne on September 13, 2007, 02:11:37 AM

A general question:  What is the easiest way to learn planets/stars/navigation? I thought I heard of some toy recently that you align to certain coordinates and it can then tell you where all the stars and mythological things (like the big dipper) are.  How did you learn star navigation?


Teri Anne

Teri Anne,

Get a star chart.  They cost 10 dollars or less.  Then got out under the stars and learn the names of the bright ones.  Compare the asterisms against your chart and you'll learn the constellations.

The ancients weren't brilliant astronomers.  They just spent their nights under the stars instead of in front of the boob tube.  The saw and learned the patterns of the seasons.  They told stories and shared their experiences.  It's not hard, really.

Cindi

Quote from: Teri Anne on September 13, 2007, 02:11:37 AM
I say to them, what's the holdup, lol?

Or, as the physics Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi put it in 1950 or so, "Where is everybody?". For some suggested answers, do a google search on 'Fermi paradox'.

Quote
Butterfly, you mentioned, "If you asked any cosmologist whether they thought they could tell you what came "before" the Big Bang, they'd stare at you as if you had two heads. (hint, there is no before; time is a property of the universe.)"

Again, perhaps.  But no scientist ever WENT anywhere without pondering possibilities.  Scientists like to seek things they can PROVE so, if they can't find any CSI evidence to lead them into a certain direction then, yes, it's like you say -- they're stopped dead.

Well, not quite.

About time and space: like Butterfly says, they are properties of the universe. In that sense the questions 'what happened before the universe came to be' and 'what's outside the universe' are meaningless: the concepts of before and outside themselves depend on conditions that apply only to the universe. Generalising the concept of outside so that there could be an 'outside' of our universe is a weird and non-obvious exercise, and would require more background in math and theoretical physics than I have.

About science and proving things: sort of. Science is essentially an iterative process where one looks at observations (or other raw data), tries to figure what's going on, forms a hypothesis or theory about how things work, makes new observations (ideally designed to check whether the hypothesis works), and so on. The scientific community has been running variations of this circle for some centuries (or even a couple of millennia, depending on how you look at it), and there's no reason to believe it will stop in the future. A theory is not 'truth' in any absolute sense, but rather a new theory is better at explaining the world than the previous theory was.

For instance, relativity theory is better at explaining how things work in a very large scale than Newtonian mechanics was. Similarly, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was better at explaining the observed biodiversity than the previous creationist theory (and yes, until about the second half of 19th century it was still mainstream science to state that God created everything). Still, neither of these is an absolute truth: there are none in science, ever.

Quote
A general question:  What is the easiest way to learn planets/stars/navigation? I thought I heard of some toy recently that you align to certain coordinates and it can then tell you where all the stars and mythological things (like the big dipper) are.  How did you learn star navigation?

First, learn to recognise the stars. There are lots of star atlases around, both electronic and paper ones; get one, study it, and watch the sky. Even paper atlases written for the casual observer have information on which way you should turn the map at which times on which dates; this sort of thing is of course easier with the computer ones, where you can enter the time and coordinates and get a picture that should look like the sky just then and there.

In order to get from knowing the stars to actual navigation, you'll need to know (or learn) some basic math, plus some formulae ultimately derived from spherical trigonometry and celestial mechanics. Going all the way back to the astronomical basis is a bit overkill, though, so the best bet is to find a book on navigation. 

  Nfr

Hi Teri Anne

Don't need the canoe, just let me know where the biggest parking lot nearest to your place is and I'll come to pick you up with my starship. My starship is called imagination. One can go anywhere in imagination, there are no limits to the visions that one can have in imagination.

No I didn't work as a scientist I'm afraid I am just a retired Social Worker. But science has been my biggest burn in my life and having an insatiable inquisitiveness, or nosiness about me. "hee, hee." So I read a lot of books and did a lot of research on the web when I got a computer. As you have already said it has been only in recent years that researchers have discovered planets around some of the stars. The planets themselves are undetectable with even the most powerful instruments from this distance from them. They have discovered them by inference like what affect one celestial body has on another. The inference here is by the stars wobble, like how fast or slow that star wobbles gives the researchers an idea as to how much mass this planet has and how close to the star the orbiting planet is.

Seems to be that much of the research into the cosmos is to a greater percentage done by inference.  Very little in the way of scientific theories of any anomalies in the cosmos has been proven as  factual and this would be the reason scientists are reluctant in letting any cats, in this case, theories out of any cosmic bags prematurely. Or it could be that there are many cover ups that is not being allowed to even trickle out into the daylight of main stream of society. Like I believe there is life on Mars but they are quite tight lipped about letting this information get out to the general public .  It took NASA 35 years to admit there was once water on Mars and lots of it. Ever since the advent of HIRISE there has been numerous different places discovered on Mars surface where great glaciers still exist there today.

[Quote....(hint, there is no before; time is a property of the universe.)"....Unquote]

Time is illusion, without time there is no distance, just like yesterday today and tomorrow are the integral of each other. We are just at this very second one heartbeat in infinity, or for This very second you are infinite within infinity.

[Quote....I just note that our cleverest minds at NASA would be EXTREMELY excited to find even a one-celled animal on Mars or one of Jupiter's.....[Unquote]

Yes I have heard that when ever Einstein mad a discovery he would dance a little jig around a work bench in excitement.
I believe that any scientist or researcher that have this insatiable thirst for discovery and inventing. such a mind must still retain much of the inner child within.

[Quote....What is the easiest way to learn planets/stars/navigation? .....[Unquote]

A good quality telescope, the type that you can mount a camera to and set up on a tripod. Least ways that was how I did my star gazing. Make a search on the web, they pretty ell have anything you might be seeking on the web.

About my being sharp on this type of topic, I asked my soul mate if she put razor blades in my soup. She said, heavens no, I would never do that. I put thumb tacks in your cereal this morning.

Cindy

Hmm.

I find it interesting that when some don't understand something or find an issue inconceivable there is a tendency to create reasons for why something has to be.

The universe is obviously there for we are a part of it yet when it comes to how it got there or how it "Became" it is obvious that it's creation is beyond our thinking/mental ability.  One just has to try and comprehend where the universe ends and it is quickly apparent that we are unable to work this out.   Many create a being/entity who could have created this universe that satisfies our need for an answer.  Scientists have developed several theories as to it's creation based on the knowledge and facts that they have discovered or determined from their research to for their answers.

All of this is ultimately based on human thinking so why is this thinking correct who are we to say how the universe was created.

Just some casual thoughts.

Steph

Since gravity warps time and space we do not know the extreme of this phenomena beyond the guesses of a black hole.

Our culture and history dictate the questions we ask. It is hard to even imagine what another life form in a different age and environment might be doing or thinking if indeed they think. Our thoughts do seem to have some form of other input that creates a thing but not explained or truly understood. Quantum mechanics is the science of trying to figure out the workings of these small reactions that snowball into consciousness.

I hesitate to use the concept of God to explain things. Beliefs change with experiences. Beliefs might be good for the soul but they do not provide a growing intelligentsia with answers that stimulate more questions. As far as an absolute truth, that is only a theory the best we can do is probability.

Quote from: Butterfly on September 13, 2007, 12:29:56 AM
disprove faith. Faith is starved of its value when literalists and syncretists wrongly cast it at odds with science. As Einstein himself said, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
[/quote                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 I think you got the Einstein quote wrong. I won't go into details because i would be going off topic.

Hi Steph
I like your thoughts on this, and I am enjoying this thread been a while since I have got into a discussion like this, kind of a cleaning out of the cerebral cobwebs.

Quote......it is obvious that it's creation is beyond our thinking/mental ability......

I agree with that statement, We will never know at least not in physicality. I to do my best to stay out of the religious propositions, it is like politics where participants end up throwing rotten veggies at one another. I will sometimes refer to a Bible quotation that may have a parallel to the topic at hand, but a Bible pusher I am not.

Like I said earlier all that we have is a database of finding and recording from an a limited assortment of research paraphernalia only a fly speck orbit from the home planet to study these phenomena that are billions of miles away.

Yes the universe is to complex for our finite mind to fully comprehend but then do we really need to understand it fully? I believe the understanding is built up through the years  from the ground up into infinity. But then time is an illusion and there cannot be distance without time.  If one was to invert time and space on itself you would have a paradox that they call the overlapping of dimensions. If each dimension is overlapped then it could very well be that beginning overlaps the ending so that there is no beginning or end.

Ever notice? There is only a couple of paragraphs on creation in the Bible? Who as a finite being describe what is infinite? You need to fill in the blanks yourself, not just in the Bible but in much of what we discover each day. coming up with new theories to replace the old, always progressively changing and redefining itself.

Cindy   

Thank you all for your posts.  It's all very interesting and I'm learning!

I'll have to get one of those constellation maps.

I had said that I thought scientists WOULD be interested in what happened before the "big bang" but presumed they don't talk about it because facts or measurements are unatainable.  I still think that's true but I hadn't considered what you'all said:  that science is based on theories backed up by observational "truths." And new observations can whack any theory.  Thus science isn't pure truth but is the truth of this moment in time, as we so far see it.

That Venus can appear in different shapes like our moon (crescent, half, full) was, as many of you know, the observational clue that Galileo had to prove the planets go around the sun rather than around the earth.  I'm guessing that that "truth" ain't gonna be changed anytime soon, lol.

While I believe evolution to be true (so far), it's is a hard thing to grasp.  While I realize that the billions of years explains how we came to be, it seems strange that (1) apes are still around (why didn't they evolve too?) and (2) that other advanced animals, especially dolphins, dogs, and octopi, can't, well, talk to us (dolphins and dogs obviously communicate with their own kind).  I guess it may be a bit off-topic (but I started the post, lol!).  On the other hand, evolution of animals can be considered part of universe creation.  But, as you all state, the observations by scientists, so far, back this one up.  Another of life's amazing theories.

And I can ponder what scientists cannot (because there are no observations to be had)...  It's not that I "need" an answer but, rather, enjoy thinking about things that puzzle me.  For example, it's odd that the universe supposedly has an "end" (and, as we discussed, "it's expanding").  This "end" of the universe observation reminds me of the talk during the middle ages where people thought the world was flat and that you would fall off the edge if you went too far.  Isn't it just as likely that there's one or maybe millions of OTHER universes out there, just beyond where we determine the "edge" of our universe is located?  We just don't have the telescopes or equipment to SEE beyond the supposed empty void at the edge of our universe.  Just remember, you heard it here first folks, lol! 

(RING, RING)

Oop, wait...I think that's the Nobel people on the phone for me!

Teri Anne

Hi Teri Anne

"Hee, hee," I missed out on the Nobel People, I was preoccupied with an interview with The National Inquirer.

About evolution, to the best of my knowledge no one has ever been able to locate that missing link from the higher order primates to the Neanderthal man.  The trail from Neanderthal to Cro-magnon, ostensibly the first human to walk upright with a more evolved mind, is pretty clear, as is on to Homo Sapiens.  Prior to the Neanderthal is all a thick fog. Genetics may have had a big roll in this and adaptation, but then what was it that induced our genetics to change? To this day we still have some the genetic strands that go all the way back to those primitive times, some identify them as inactive genetic strands . Was there some sort of genetic manipulation in progress all the way back in the earliest day of Cro-magnon man? Could this be the missing link? If so then who and what was it that did the genetic manipulation? Could it be that we were a product of supervised evolution by a yet higher intelligence then us? Our neighbors from another galaxy? Now I know I am stretching it a bit, but I have always marveled that the best part of the human psych is *imagination*, especially children.

Indeed why are we the highest advanced cerebrally compared to all of the other species on this planet? As for other universe beyond this one I have entertained that thought many times myself. *Imagination* You are now departing this universe and look back and it appears like a gigantic swirling galaxy then you turn to look forward and you see a vista of other stars like the stars we see in the sky at night except they are not stars, they are universes a multitude of them all over the not so empty void. And you then add all the multiverses in other dimensions ad-infinitum.

Cindy 

Hi Cindy,

I like your imagination!

Supervised evolution might explain why we lucked out and the dolphins/dogs/octopi didn't.  Hopefully our supposed genius will lead us away from the stupidity of humanity, war and global warming being a couple issues.  I'm sure that you've heard the Einstein quote, "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

Popular Science magazine mentioned that some scientists have tested putting garlic in cows' food - it apparently reduces methane (much more dangerous than CO2) by 50%.  They're seeing if the garlic is tasteable in the milk.  So, maybe we're on the way to partly solving that one. 

Richard Branson was asked, if he could solve any problem, what he would like to solve.  He said "war."  Guess that's a harder one to solve.

Cindy, I loved your VISION of travelling beyond our galaxy and seeing more stars -- only "they are universes a multitude of them all over the not so empty void."

If our hunch is true, then maybe the "big bang" isn't the big deal we make it up to be.  With this line of thought, we needn't worry why and when our universe suddenly came to be -- Our universe might just be a MINOR explosive action in a small part of the multi-universes space.  A multi-universes reality is endless in both TIME and SPACE, having no beginning and no end.  Existence, contrary to long-held human beliefs, would not have begun with our world, our universe.  A supreme being could still exist but some of the details might have to be rewritten, again.

Maybe the "big bang" isn't so BIG when compared to the possible reality OUTSIDE our universe.  Some would say "God only knows" but, still, it's fun to ponder...a typically human thing to do.

Teri Anne