From The Cosmic Perspective

Just as it woudl take thousands of years to count the stars in the milky way, it would also take thousands of years to count all of the galaxies. Think for a moment about the total number of stars in all these galaxies. Assuming an average of 100 billion stars in each of these 100 billion galaxies, the total number of stars in the observable universe is roughly

100 billion X 100 billion = 10^11 X 10^11 = 10^22
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
100 billion stars on average is a very modest number. Our galaxy is a bit above average and has about 600 billion.

Perspective. Visit a beach. Run your hands through the fine grained sand. Try to imagine counting every one of the tiny grains of sand as they slip through your fingers. Then imagine counting every grain of sand on the beach. Next thing abotu counting ALL the grains of dry sand on ALL the beaches everywhere on Earth. The number you would count would be less than the number of stars in teh boservalbe universe.

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Manu Narayan

i think i speak for all when i say...


"HOLY SHIT!"

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Rest In Peace victims of Terrorism, you will be remembered.

http://www.sublimedirectory.com/flag.gif

You mean to tell me that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on the entire planet? ..... Did I read that right?

If my textbook is to be belived then yes, that is correct.

you better believe it.. it took me years to count all that stuff.. :D

and people still prefer to believe that we're chosen by God and that there isnt any life outside of our little tiny planet......

It's a good perspective though, Manu... kinda scary

Originally posted by tam
It's a good perspective though, Manu... kinda scary

Very scary...

Lets do another...

Imagine that you are counting all of the stars in the Galaxy.

There are at most modern estimates 500-700 billion stars.

Imagine you could name one a second, without taking any breaks.

60*60=3600*24=86400 Thats how many you count in a day.

86400*365=31,536,000 Thats how many you count in a year.

600,000,000,000 (how many stars are in the Galaxy)/31,536,000 (how many stars you could count in a year)=
19025.8 YEARS to count all of the stars.

It would take someone almsot 20K YEARS to cataloge the Galaxy counting 1 star a second...

Originally posted by Manu


Very scary...

Lets do another...

Imagine that you are counting all of the stars in the Galaxy.

There are at most modern estimates 500-700 billion stars.

Imagine you could name one a second, without taking any breaks.

60*60=3600*24=86400 Thats how many you count in a day.

86400*365=31,536,000 Thats how many you count in a year.

600,000,000,000 (how many stars are in the Galaxy)/31,536,000 (how many stars you could count in a year)=
19025.8 YEARS to count all of the stars.

It would take someone almsot 20K YEARS to cataloge the Galaxy counting 1 star a second...

yeah.. and it's all an accident.. /end sarcasm

on a side note: Alex Rodriguez signed 10 (12??) years at 259 million $'s.

this contract can pay a person minimum wage for 22,000+ years.....

Originally posted by Manu


Very scary...

Lets do another...

Imagine that you are counting all of the stars in the Galaxy.

There are at most modern estimates 500-700 billion stars.

Imagine you could name one a second, without taking any breaks.

60*60=3600*24=86400 Thats how many you count in a day.

86400*365=31,536,000 Thats how many you count in a year.

600,000,000,000 (how many stars are in the Galaxy)/31,536,000 (how many stars you could count in a year)=
19025.8 YEARS to count all of the stars.

It would take someone almsot 20K YEARS to cataloge the Galaxy counting 1 star a second...


Amazing.. I love this stuff.

Now imagine there are just 500 billion stars in the Universe, now if only 1% of them have one planet with some sort of life that is 5 Billion planets with some sort of Alien life!!

Now If only 1% of those planets supporting life has "intelligent" life that means there would be 50 million planets with some sort of intelligent Aliens.


Now if only 1% of the planets out there with intelligent life is thousands or more years advanced than us. And has the ability to use wormholes and teleportation to travel vast distances of the Universe in short time that would mean there are possibly 500,000 various Alien species that could come visit us or watch, abduct, take us over, etc. And I think that is super cool!! :D

But get this Jeff... 500 billion in OUR GALAXY...

There are HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of Galaxies...

Oh damn, I missed that. i thought that was in the whole universe!!!

Good God, that means using my conservative formula there could be 250,000,000,000,000,000 Highly advanced Alien life forms that could be capable of visiting Earth!!!

Damn I would think it would be almost impossible that we haven't been visited just by looking at the incredible numbers

:eek:

I think your formula gets even more exciting when you get VERY conservative...because I don't think it is neccessarily that conservative. :-)

But take our Galaxy. 500 billion stars.

And say that .1% of them have planetary systems.

That now becomes 500 million

Say that .1% of those have planetary systems that are capable of supporting life as we know it.

That now leaves us with 500,000

Say that .1% of those have life

That leaves us with 5,000.

And say that .1% of those have INTELLIGENT life

That leaves us with 5.

We've taken such incredibly conservative numbers and that leaves us with FIVE intelligent planets out there. one of which would be ours...so then There are 4 out there, and within 100,000 lightyears...

That is not that crazy of a proposition of making contact...especially if any of them are higher tech...

Unfortunately Manu, the thing that you did not take into account was how many of these planets that have intelligent life actually have intellignet life NOW. Earth counts as having intellignet life, but it has only been around for thousands of years, out of billions. Thus, this makes the prospects of finding intelligent life quite a bit less likely, though hopefully the conservative nature of many of the numbers chosen would counter this, but it is hard to say since it is all guessing anyway.

Plus, with the seemingly high chance of Earth's intelligent life doing something catastrophic, it seems like other intellignet beings may have done the same thing and are not around anymore.

The point of this analysis still stands in that it is not totally impossible to encounter extraterrestrial life.

Nate

Thats very true nate...but the nature of evolution would seem to say that if a race has come into existence in the past, unless their planet/environemtn si no more, one would come into existence again...

But that is aside from the point...I don't even care too much about intelligent life...look at any sort of macroscopic life, even plant forms...that would be simply amazing.

even if there somehow is life on other planets 100 billion lightyears away.. that's still a bit far.. traveling at the speed of light for years is a bit far.. we would probably never see them.. or ever know..

The distance is definitely a factor in the chances of contact. We have no plausible idea for faster than light travel right now...that does not mean that we will never find one, but as of now there is no path that looks promising.

While I agree the odds of intelligent life existing is better than not.

Traveling anywhere near the speed of light is fantasy and probably always will be and I mean that for everyone and probably anything that is alive. Every theory I have heard regarding traveling faster than the speed of light involves conditions that are unsurvivable.

There are Ants living in an Anthill in my back yard and there are Ants living in an Anthill in your back yard. Yet, these Ants will never meet because Ants can't travel fast enough to travel the distance to the Ants in your back yard in an Ants life time.

I could gather some of the Ants in my back yard, put them in an envelope and send them to you so you could set them loose with your Ants. For Ants this would be like entering another dimension. Though they could travel fast enough to reach your Ants. They probably wouldn't survive the stress of the travel (envelope sorters) and they would be crushed. If they did survive and you turned them loose with your Ants. They would be attacked by your Ants and torn to shreds because they weren’t of their colony.

Be careful what you wish for.

I think one of the problems is that we are taking what we humans here on earth know and our level of technology and applying it to the whole universe. We know very little still about our own world, we just recently learned to fly. Imagine where our technology will be 1000 years from now. Or how about a 100,000 thousand years from now. Now imagine an Alien race that is hundreds of thousands to millions of years more advanced than us. To say they don't have the ability to travel between the Galaxies and the stars is wrong. That would mean somewhere along the line that technological advances will just stop. And considering the recent lab experiments here in the US with teleprtation and time travel. I think it is only a matter of time before we develop these things. Or we can force the government to hand over the Alien technology they are working on in area 51..:cool:

Actually, I do not think that a failure to surpass the light barrier means that technological progress would eventually stop. THere are numerous examples that I could give to refute this statement, but I think you can realize that the statement is wrong just by thinking about it on your own. However, I still think that faster than light travel may one day be possible, though very unlikely. There are many theories which could allow for fast travel, but depend on materials that we do not think exist. However, what if we are wrong? I will not give up the possibility, even though I do not think it will happen.

Not to burst any bubbles Jeff, but dont' forget aliens could be LESS advanced just as easily...

BUT, with that said, I think the KEY of your statement is that 'anything is possible' clause. We're constantly learning more and redefining our world...one can only image what the next 1000 years will hold.