Haitus

I apologized for the haitus. Life has kept me busy for the past several months. I will be returning in January 2011 with more thoughts and musings about our world and the universe.

Are We Truly Alone In This Universe?

"Larry King will host a discussion with Dr. Kaku surrounding recent comments by astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who said in a documentary that there is likely alien life, but communicating with them could be harmful to the human race. Dr. Hawking’s belief is that a visit from an alien race might be similar to Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas. The interview will air Friday evening (4/30) at 9 p.m., EST (and replay again at Midnight). Stay Tuned for further details" (taken from Dr. Kaku's official website "Welcome to Explorations in Science with Dr. Michio Kaku")

I watched over half of this episode where four men debated and discussed Dr. Hawking's comments as well as his upcoming documentary. Personally, it sounded like they were making fun of the man. Nevertheless, it was a lively show and quite interesting. I think these aliens may have been living among us for centuries, observing. I believe that there may be some truths to the ancient aliens theory when it comes to highly advanced, ancient civilizations who all suddenly vanished. This world is a lot older than creationists may want to believe in; and in contrast to what the evolutionists want to believe, humans did not originate on this world. I believe the Mayans may be on to something when they believed humans came from another part of the universe. We may never know, at least not this generation or the next. I think Dr. Hawking is in the right to warn us to not be so quick to find other life in the universe; the outcome may not be what we hoped for. An example if you will: NASA sends a computer-manned ship to Mars to gather up various samples and bring them back to Earth. We study these samples and find that yes, there is life or has been life on Mars as the samples have contained proofs for this. However, since these samples are foreign in our world, and contained a bacteria for which nothing on Earth has any defense or immunity for, we just exposed ourselves to a potential lethal situation for mankind: annihilation of our species. Sobering thoughts, huh? We should take Dr. Hawking more seriously that we have. It may be what stands between life and total extinction.

Our Amazing and Complex Universe

Is it possible to travel across vast distance in the universe, or go to another dimension? I watched a few episodes of a new series on the Science Channel hosted by Dr. Kaku, called "Sci Fi Science." It's a spin-off of his more recently published book called "Physics of the Impossible." He presented ways on how sci fi or pseudo-science theories could one day become scientific theories. In these two episodes, Dr. Kaku presented ways on how we could travel across the universe by not having to accelerate, or go the speed of light; but, by manipulating space time. However, to do this would mean taking a massive energy source, something we're not ready for technology-wise, to make this happen. He also showed a few ways on how we could create a portal to go from our dimension and into another; but, in doing so we would not know if that dimension follows the same laws of phsyics as in our own dimension. By creating a portal, or a wormhole into the other dimension, it would be so small we could only be able to send over our DNAs and instructions on how to reconstruct our civilization so that it could survive in another dimension.

Wow. These go to show just how complex our universe really is, and just how far we still need to go technology-wise to accomplish these feats. I love the idea of being able to travel to the other side of this universe to see what is out there. Are we truly alone? Or, are there others out there like us? Or, are they different from us? I don't believe we are alone. I believe there are others like us in the universe at various stages in civilization and technology. I believe most are as primitive as we are, but there may be one or two out there that are far more advanced than we are. This may be a reason why we have not heard from them; they are keeping their silence for a reason.

Why would a God, or a highly intelligent being, create such an enormous and complex universe only to have life just here on Earth? There are much that He has not revealed to us, for it is all still beyond our comprehension.

A Question of Ethics

I watched a movie last night, Terminator Salvation; and, it has gotten me thinking about something. If you take a man (or a woman) and strip him of all his exoskeleton (skeleton and skin) and replace it with something like titanium for instance; then give him advanced/improved vision and hearing; and return all of his organs including his brain, heart, and other major organs....would he still be a man? Would he still retain his soul? Even if all that is left that are organic and original were his organs? How far will man and science go to perfect his body as well as enable him to live a prolonged life? How far will some go to reach immortality?

These are interesting and somewhat disconcerning questions. I need to dwell on these for a while before I can be totally honest with myself.