The Universe Knowing Itself

My last post was very Descartes ("I think, therefore I am"). Today, I want to talk about space.

Hey van Gogh, paint this.

What fascinates me about the universe is that it's already so vast (and still growing), though it's totally possible that life on Earth is the only life around.

Wrap your head around that idea for a second. Earth could be the beginning (and hopefully not the end) of the only sentient beings to ever exist.

Why is that such a big deal? Astronomer David Kornreich (via Space.com) claims there could be as many as 10 trillion galaxies in the universe. There's an estimated 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Multiply the two and you get 100 octillion stars, which Blogger doesn't even think is a real word. 100 octillion looks like 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Yeah.

Skyandtelescope.com uses a different estimation for the number of stars in our universe and decided on 70 billion trillion. Now, we can talk about the stars in the "observable" universe, meaning the 13.7 billion light-years we think is as far as we can see of an even bigger universe, or the fact that our universe could be part of a complex system of universes (a multiverse, as Space.com calls it), or the curve of space-time distorting our view of distant objects' distance from Earth, but let's just stick with numbers for now.

If the universe really does have 70 billion trillion stars in it, there must be planets out there with proper living conditions for other creatures? Well, the closest star to our sun is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.24 light-years away. That's pretty far. The chances of a space rock orbiting a star close enough to not burn or freeze its inhabitants is probably also very unlikely.

The reason I'm so nuts about this idea is that if we are the only conscious beings, that leaves the rest of the universe as very big... and very stupid. The nebulae, stars, and space objects that fascinate us have no idea what they are, can't perceive themselves or anything around them, even though they are moving fast. There's that BS question about whether or not a falling tree would make a "sound" if no one is there to hear it, but I think it would be a shame if the whole universe existed with no one there to appreciate it.

Carl Sagan once said "We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." This is such a beautiful concept because if we are the only living things in the universe, we're also the only chance it has at understanding its secrets.

Let's go.