Universe overcrowded: Illegal immigrants to blame?


Disclaimer: I suck at science. Chemistry, biology, physics - they all hate me. Sure, I can memorize some shit and pass a test, but any real understanding of why cells divide when it just seems to complicate things, or why protons and electrons continue to hang out together when they clearly have such different points of view, eludes me. Regardless, science intrigues me. It's possible to be fascinated by something while not understanding it at all. Take women, for example. But I digress.

Science is the topic because of a new report in the journal Nature. Turns out there may be three times as many stars in the universe as previously believed. Last I heard, the universe is still expanding, so there's probably plenty of room for all this so you don't really need to clear out the garage.

It's not like there weren't a lot of stars to begin with. Like 400,000,000,000 (400 billion) here in the good old Milky Way, and 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) in some other galaxies, and the old estimate was that the universe had around 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (100 sextillion - and that's a real word, even though I wish I'd made it up.) Now the big brains tell us the actual number may be closer to 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (300 sextillion), which is, by any measure, a fuck of a lot of stars.

Considering that most of us use the words "million" and "billion" as if they're roughly the same (thanks to the federal budget folks for that, I think, because they don't seem to know the difference) it's really challenging to get your mind around these big numbers. One of the most useful methods of putting big numbers into context is to correlate them to time. For example:
  • One million seconds = 12 days
  • One billion seconds = 31 years
  • One trillion seconds = 31,689 years
  • Three hundred sextillion seconds = just a really, really long time. Longer than two operas back-to-back maybe.
Logic suggests that with all those stars there must be lots and lots of planets, and some of those planets must be pretty similar to ours, so the likelihood that there is life out there beyond us is increased. That leads directly to a musing on what a revelation it would be if there was, at last, some undeniable discovery, some evidence that we are not alone. How human experience would be forever altered if it was learned that there are billions or trillions more creatures - perhaps not that different from us? - living out there in far-flung galaxies. Imagine the possibilities for the expansion of the human mind and culture, and the pursuit of meaning. Not to mention the potential for retail sales growth!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How I have neglected my blog and the sadness that results

So jeez, I am feeling a little contrite because I have neglected this blog. Feeling a little like I have let an old friend fall by the wayside while I have been spending all my time with someone new.I even got needled by one of my (few) readers today - "Wow, no blog post since April 2!"  Feeling a little frivolous and superficial because my good old reliable Blogger blog here has fallen victim to my other time sucks - namely, Facebook, and of course, what I like to call "real life." Maintaining a blog is no simple task, my friend. Just mouse up there to the top of the screen, left of center, and start clicking on "Next blog." You will soon soon discover there are lots and lots people who start a blog, make two or three posts, and discover it's kind of demanding. (You'll also discover that about two-thirds of all the random blogs you'll see in the "next blog" mode are in Spanish, which I find strangely fascinating. ) Maybe those whose ...
Read more

"Mikey Angels" flies off in both directions at once

Image
The expression we've all heard is "you can't be too rich or too thin." I suppose that gets said a lot around the tennis court at the country club, the changing room at Sak's? I suppose it draws a wry smile every time. Or is it really said in the aisles at Target by people who are at no risk of being too much of either? The expression we've never heard is "you can't be too smart," because we all know it is possible to be too smart. Kind of ironic since we spend a lot of energy trying to force kids to be smart. We pound them with homework, make them take tests, tell them the kids in Mumbai are going to take your future job. We try to get them into the best schools, the ones for the smart people, but they are always at risk of becoming "too smart for their own good." Based on what I've heard about last weekend's Presidential candidate activity, Obama is running the risk of being too smart for his own good. He and McCain did these l...
Read more

Burgers with daddy

Image
Sometimes on Sundays I am transported to a place that was called Gene and Darlene's. (OK, that sounded kind of Shirley MacLaine. I am not talking about out of body experiences here. It's a memory, ok?) Gene and Darlene's was a bar down on Shoal Creek south of Joplin. The building still stands (photo proof here, taken August 2008.) No telling how many other names the place has had since it was Gene and Darlene's, but that's the name it has in my mind. On Sundays sometimes, when I was a kid, daddy would come up with the notion that burgers from Gene and Darlene's would really hit the spot. Being always in favor of food in general, and carry-out food being really exotic to me, the idea was always a winner in my opinion. I would be eager to climb into the car with daddy and ride along. It was a short trip down to Redings Mill, around the infamous curve that topped a bluff over the creek, where all kinds of carloads of people had suffered hideous deaths in spectacula...
Read more