We most assuredly are not alone in our vast universe,
Preface:
I happened upon a show; Hunt for Alien Evidence - - - - - - - - - - - - Back in the day, like so many other kids I tried to imagine what Aliens would look like. If they were to stop by earth for a visit, would they be frightening, like so many in the movies? Would they be kind or aggressive?
Today,especially in the areas of the very small, Quantum Physics and DNA, science, keeps bumping into the “Intelligent Design Scenario”. 1) Something so perfectly engineered like DNA couldn’t have evolved and, 2) Our universe couldn’t exist at all if any of its parameters were altered, even slightly during the nanoseconds following the big bang. As a result, scientists are beginning to say, “something or someone, out of our realm, had something to do with it”. I concur with IDS, but arrive at another additional conclusion: Earthly humanity is Isolated, and it is meant to be. (Now Follow me.) Most of us assume, there just has to be intelligent life out there on many of the planets orbiting the 250 billion plus stars in our Milky Way Galaxy let alone the billions of other galaxies. Radio Waves:
Since it's invention, our radio signals have been going out for over 100 years. Maybe an alien civilization has tuned us in but too far for a 'Return to Sender' signal and any civilization within 50 light years - close enough to hear a reply, isn't technically advanced or doesn't want to answer. More importantly if an advanced older civilization exists, how come we haven't heard them.
As you may know, light travels at 186,000 miles a second and so do radio waves. By now we could have had an acknowledgement of one of our radio/TV signals from here on earth from someone, somewhere out there less than 50 light years away., (50 out and 50 back = 100). But we haven’t, and there are only 1,300 stars with their planets with in that range. If by chance the 1937 Hindenburg radio broadcast was picked up today, it would mean the planet is 87 light years away. And if 'they' replied, we’ll have to wait till about 2111 for their answer. Alien life with a transmitter under 50 light years could have replied sooner, but nothing.
More importantly, with all the possibilities of an advanced older mature 'radio' civilization existing before humans, how come we haven't heard them. Our receivers listen across time, and astronomers estimate there are about 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way alone of which the bulk have at least one planet in orbit. Whether life inhabits them is a guess and we are detecting more almost daily. Since we can see the stars light that implies they we could tune in to their planets radio broadcasts assuming they had a civilization that evolved long before us ago and their signal was strong enough to cover the distance.
The light from those stars has been streaming to earth for eons, plenty of time for civilization to evolve on another of God’s planets. Why no radio, AM or FM, short wave or long wave, even microwave? One asks, what frequency would be common to all intelligent beings? That would be the frequency of the “hydrogen atom", the universe's most abundant element. SETI has been tuned for generations with no luck. Then with the demise of the Arecibo Observatory, a new player took up the slack, it's called the Breakthrough Listen Project, but still nothing.
Space Travel:
Our closest exoplanet in the “Goldilocks” zone of its sun, is Proxima B, the second planet orbiting our closest star neighbor, Proxima Centauri. It is only 4.2 light years away. But Proxima B completes one orbit of its star in, the hard to imagine, every 11.2 Earth-days! As a result, it's likely that the exoplanet is tidally locked, meaning it always shows the same face to its host star, just as the moon shows only one face to Earth and as does Mercury to the Sun. That translates into planets with boiling hot surface on one side, ice cold freezing on the other. Not a place to live or visit. I might mention, just prior to Covid-19 there has been a flurry of sightings of UFO's. The government even released their radar tracking videos. Media, even 60 Minutes, started to publish stories with the pilots that spotted them along with abductees. But still never a legit, hi-res image of a craft - never.
Of all the exoplanets (catalogue) that we have discovered, and that is over 4000 so far, 150 are analyzed as earth-like, but for assorted reasons are not suitable for carbon based life like ourselves. Surely nothing close. There are numerous features required. First it has to be in the Goldilocks zone, and most obvious, it has to be a planet of similar mass and gravity, oxygen atmosphere and water. A liquid metal core that produces an earth like magnetic field for gamma ray protection and atmosphere retention. Polar tilt for seasonal renewal. A large mega planet nearby (like our Jupiter) would help attract space debris like meteors, astroids and comets. As far as alien intelligence goes, sure, they may have evolved in an atmosphere and gravity different than ours, which in a reverse scenario, would make our atmosphere and gravity, perilous to them.
I was hoping by summer, 2024, many questions in this regard would be answered as a result of NASA’s extraordinary new James Webb Telescope. One of the first things it will look at is the Trappist-1 System only 39 light years from earth and its four earth-like planets. One by one they were rulled out for assorted reasons.
Putting time and distance in perspective, consider this; Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched back in 1977, is our furthest space craft, and is now passed our solar system and currently traveling at about 38,000 mph. It is presently about 14 billion miles away or only 0.0024 lightyears away. Radio signals take 16 hours to reach it.
So let us say we were to head out to our closest neighbor Proxima B (4.2 ly) at a million miles per hour, still it would take 2,500 years just to get to our closest neighboring star’s planet. (You can do the math.) And that works in reverse for any visitors, despite what they say at area 51.
The way I see it, the bottom line is, we will never be able to leave our solar system in any practical sense. Maybe with the unlikely “hibernation chamber” as in many scifi movies. Then we’d have to take our chances on, “where to go”. And lastly another favorite of scifi is Warp Speed - a way to surpass the speed of light with an exotic propulsion of some sort. Without the bending of time and space itself, this is just not possible. Still, there are some scifi writers today, that fantasize quantum mechanics's entanglement principal might some day enable faster than light travel. Already a believer of the Intelligent Design Scenario, I arrived at my conclusion that the, “Intelligence that conceived and formulated the universe”, also intended us to be isolated in our little corner of the Milky Way Galaxy surrounded by a zillion more galaxies in an ever expanding universe. The documentary linked in my opening sentence, helped precipitate this conclusion and prompted this dissertation. Watch it and see what conclusions you come to.
Next time you are in the country somewhere, look up at the milky way in all its awe and wonder in the night time sky. Know all what you see is waiting when you beam off our roller coaster ride here on earth. All the planets to galaxies, past, present and future will be your eternal domain. But for now all self-aware intelligence has been intentionally made inaccessible to one another by the same Person that so perfectly engineered the universe in the first place. Maybe all planetary sentients must be tested in one way or another. Some may have passed, some flunked, some still in the testing process, like us. (see CS Lewis' Space Trilogy) So what do you have planned for eternity? Have you ever thought about it, as have I. What could one do for eternity with out getting Bored, no matter your favorite hobby or pleasure. How much Ice cream can you eat after all? How many rollar coaster rides can you take. I feel in the afterlife, with God's will, our soul will be free to meander an eternity of time and space in an infinite universe in another dimension, and “at will”, in an "Quantum Instant". Free to meet & greet all your relatives and all those other folks on other planets in other galaxies at any point in time. Free to see what the folks did on earth before we were born and in your current time too. You could head back to earth to see how we humans are running things in the year 2460. I know I would head back to walk with the son of God in His days in Bethlehem and Judea. Maybe even Adam and Eve, Alexender the Great, even sail with Columbus, hang out with Abe Lincoln and Einstein, watch the dinosaurs roaming our earth. One fantasy I've always dreamed about would be sailing with Captain Cook when he arrived at Tahiti being greeted by the south seas islanders, especially their good natured and most amicable topless women. What fun! And far as the future goes, we'll be able to watch the collision of our milky way with the Andromeda galaxy. Sometimes I’d share the fun and travel with a friend, spouse or family member.
And that's just to start. There is no telling, outside of time, what God has built for us in eternity and where anything is possible who knows what we might conceive of.
Lastly, I realize that Quantum Physics is now making a big impact on the esoteric scene of reality in science. This is not only in theoretical but real life application such as computing and communications. There are those who will no doubt extract ‘faster than light travel’ from possibility to reality here, but I say not so. We will no doubt go farther in the quantum world than we are now. Quantum physics is actually strengthening to boost the connection of man and the supernatural as best explained in the Bible.
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