The Universe

Look at this vid of all the known galaxies in the observable universe. I don't see how people can believe that we are the only intelligent life (if indeed we are intelligent *g*) amidst the 100-200 billion galaxies each with billions of stars and countless planets.


We now have found that life can exist using arsenic instead of phosphorous. We have found life existing in pools of radioactive water, surviving the vacuum and radiation of space and myriad other extremeophiles. We would be self-centered indeed to think that our planet is the only one in the entire universe with life and given the sheer number of possible worlds, the only one to develop life with intelligence.



In the epilogue to his All the Stars a Stage, James Blish wrote:

It is written That given any one of a thousand million possible paths, life will take them all; That worlds which will support life will give birth to it; That worlds which cannot support life will be colonized; And that where both can take place, both will take place. It is written that this is what the vast interstellar stage is for: To be given consciousness and purpose while its gift of existence lasts. It is written; That this is a random process; That in the end all will be darkness and silence again; But that while it lasts, life spreads through it, to make it aware of its own vastness and beauty, which otherwise it can never have known. This is a gift, but the Giver is unknown. That too is written. Not too sure about an actual Giver part but the rest of it rings true to me.