It's a meaningless question to ask If these stories are right What matters most Is that it keeps you hypnotized
Here you go: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36769422/ LONDON — British physicist Stephen Hawking says aliens are out there, but it could be too dangerous for humans to interact with extraterrestrial life. Hawking claims in a new documentary titled "Into the Universe With Stephen Hawking" that intelligent alien life forms almost certainly exist — but warns that communicating with them could be "too risky." "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet," Hawking said. "I imagine they might exist in massive ships ... having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach.” The 68-year-old scientist said a visit by extraterrestrials to Earth might well be like Christopher Columbus arriving in the Americas, "which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans." He speculated that most extraterrestrial life would be similar to microbes, or small animals. Microbial life might exist far beneath the Martian surface, where liquid water is thought to trickle through the rock. Marine creatures might also conceivably live in huge oceans of water beneath a miles-thick layer of ice on Europa, a moon of Jupiter. But if a scientific census could be extended beyond our solar system to the rest of the Milky Way and beyond, the odds in favor of life's existence rise dramatically, Hawking said. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like." Hawking said an attack by interstellar predators is just one of the dismaying possibilities in the search for intelligent life beyond Earth. Another possibility is that intelligence itself might be inimical to life. Hawking pointed out that humanity has put itself on the edge of its own destruction by creating nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction. "If the same holds for intelligent aliens, then they might not last long," he said. "Perhaps they all blow themselves up soon after they discover that E=mc2. If civilizations take billions of years to evolve, only to vanish virtually overnight, then sadly we've next to no chance of hearing from them." Hawking has become one of the world's best-known scientists — not just because of his theoretical work on cosmology and black holes, but also because he has achieved so much while coping with a paralyzing neural disease for most of his life. In recent years he has become a prominent advocate for space travel, contending that humans must journey into the heavens and going through zero-gravity training himself. "Into the Universe With Stephen Hawking" had its television premiere in the United States on the Discovery Channel on Sunday, and is due for broadcast in Britain next month. This report includes information from The Associated Press and msnbc.com.
Hey dumbass, the question is how anyone with any mass would overcome the energy budget required to navigate the distances between Earth and the statistical average location of another intelligent life form, and even then, what are the odds of it occurring within the tiny period of cosmic time that we have or will exist, not to mention how in the hell would we find each other among a trillion planets. (our electromagnetic traces still only extend about 100 light years or a pimple on an elephants ass in cosmic terms) not bloody likely, so I ain't scart
There's no reason that there's an end to anything, but we know that the universe is expanding, and has been for the all the time that we know that it existed. If we extrapolate backward from that, we have to conclude that at some point in the far distant past, it was tiny. That is the observation that leads to the Big Bang Theory. And coming up with an explanation for what caused that Big Bang has been tough for atheist physicists.
I'm not sure if I believe in God. I think I do I try to be Muslim. I can't find anything wrong in the things it's taught me so far.
What do they teach you? Do you get down on the floor and pray five times a day, facing mecca? Do you eat pork? Do you fast during Ramadan?
I think one argument is that the universe expands to a point, contracts back down to nothingness, and then starts the cycle over again - so there is no beginning or end - infinity.
The problem with that is idea is that there is not enough mass in the universe to stop its present expansion. In fact the rate of expansion is increasing. So there will most likely be no "big crunch."
Not the same thing as saying there is no God. That may very well be Hawking's position, but you could be agnostic or even a theist and still think its not necessary to invoke God to explain the creation of the universe.
Epistemology and Ethics all over the hangout today..... Must be time for college to start up again. Brain calisthenics.
There is only one God and the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) was his messenger. Yes, well most of the time. No, hell no! Yes, well most of the time.
If we ever meet aliens, by definition they are friendly. If they were hostile, they would have never met us in the first place. Instead, they would have launched a probe with a biological agent from somewhere behind jupiter.
Its been tough for the human race. "God did it" has the same explanatory power as "its MAGIC!" ... i.e. none whatsoever. If you're a curious sort, which scientists must be, you're still left with the deeper question: how did God do it.
No conclusions can be drawn in the absence of information. If the Big Bang began with a singularity of information there would be no way for humans to ever have any knowledge of time before it's existence. If conditions of the universe exist beyond our senses or tools of experimentation then there is no way we can have any perception of it. And we wouldn't even know that we don't know. There's a lotta things about me you don't know anything about, Dottie. Things you wouldn't understand. Things you couldn't understand. Things you shouldn't understand.
Unless we come up with new tools of experimentation. Just because I think the Big Bang wraps it up into a nice package of "God Did It" doesn't make it so. The scientists should keep working on an explanation while we engineers are doing the work that makes life better.
