Life Looks For Life

"As children we fear the dark. The unknown troubles us. Anything might be out there. Ironically it’s our fate to live in the dark. Head out from the earth in any direction you choose, and after an initial flash of blue, you are surrounded by blackness; punctuated only here and there by the faint distant stars. Even after we're grown the darkness retains its power to frighten us, and so there are those who say we should not enquire too closely, into who else might be living in that darkness. Better not to know, they say.

There are four hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Of this immense multitude, could it be that our humdrum sun is the only one with an inhabited planet? Maybe, maybe the origin of life or intelligence is exceedingly improbable. Or maybe civilizations arise all the time but wipe themselves out as soon as they are able. Or, here and there peppered across space. Maybe there are worlds something like our own. On which other beings gaze up and wonder as we do, about who else lives in the dark.

Life is a comparative rarity. You can survey dozens of worlds and find that in only one of them does life arise, and evolve, and persist. If we humans ever go to those worlds, then it will be because a nation or a consortium of them, believes it to be of its advantage, or to the advantage of the human species. In our time we have crossed the solar system and sent four ships to the stars. But we continue to search for inhabitants. Life looks for life -Carl Sagan.

The Frontier is Everywhere

"We were hunters and foragers. The frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the earth, and the ocean, and the sky. The open roads still softly calls. Our little terraqueous globe is the madhouse of those hundred, thousand, millions of worlds. We who can not even put our planetary home in order, riven with rivalries and hatred, ARE WE TO VENTURE OUT INTO SPACE? By the time we are ready to settle even the nearest planetary systems, we will have changed. The simple passage of so many generations will have changed us. The necessity will have changed us. We're an adaptable species. It'll not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars; it'll be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses. More confident, farseeing, capable and prudent. For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness. What new wonders undreamed of in our time will we have rode in another generation and another. How far will have our nomadic species have wondered, by the end of the next century and the next millennium. Our remote descendants safely arrayed on many worlds in through the solar system and beyond, will be unified. By their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that whatever other life may be, the only humans in all this universe, come from earth. They will gaze up and stream to find the blue dot in thier skies. They will marvel that how vulnerable the repository of war potential once was. How perilous our infancy, How humble our beginnings. How many rivers we had to cross before we found our way." - Carl Sagan

Time Travel

       Time travel is a fascinating topic and i never lose a chance to read it, watch it or even talk about it. Last time i was watching a lecture video by Dr Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical physics at the city college of New York and co-founder of String theory. During the lecture he narrated a time travel story about a girl named Jane. I found the story very interesting so i decided to share it on the blog. This is only the short version. You can find the original in the Sci-fi novel written by Robert A. Heinlin, ''All You Zombies".

       The year is 1945. A stranger emerges from the darkness carrying a baby girl that he leaves at an orphanage. Well, the nuns find this baby girl, they don’t know where this baby girl came from, so the nuns call her… Jane. So Jane grows up at the orphanage wondering, “Who is my mother? Who is my father?”

       When Jane is seventeen years old, she’s a beautiful young woman and finally has her first boyfriend  A drifter comes drifting into her life, but it just wasn't meant to be. They quarrel. She argues with her boyfriend. It’s a very sad story. First, she finds out that she’s pregnant. Her boyfriend has left her. She’s abandoned and pregnant. She’s rushed to the hospital 9 months later and she delivers a beautiful baby girl. But somehow, somebody breaks into the hospital that night, kidnaps Jane’s baby girl, and vanishes into the darkness. Wait, it gets worse. Jane is bleeding very rapidly and death becomes a real possibility. The doctors must perform an experimental emergency operation. They have to change Jane into Jim. Well, Jim wakes up the next day with a huge headache and he’s told the bad news. First, the boyfriend left her pregnant, somebody stole her baby, and now she’s not even Jane anymore!   She’s… Jim.

       So Jim grows up to become a bar room drunk. Every time someone asks, “Who are you, Jim? Where’d you come from? Who’s your mother or father?” He just didn't know.Finally Jim one day is once again stone drunk at the floor of the bar right after a bar fight. The bartender comes up to him and says, “Jim! Jim! Wake up! Hey, guess what? You see, I’m not really a bartender. I’m actually a time traveller. Let’s step into my machine and see who this Jim/Jane is.”So they go back into the past. Poor Jim, he doesn't know where he is in the past. However, he meets this beautiful seventeen year old girl and it’s love at first sight. But it just wasn't meant to be. They quarrel. Then Jim finds out that his girlfriend is pregnant. Jim says to himself, “Holy crap. History is repeating itself! This happened to be me! Well I’m going to make sure that my baby gets the best education possible.”That night, nine months later, Jim goes to the hospital, breaks open the window, and kidnaps his own precious baby girl. Then Jim, holding his baby girl, goes back into the time machine back, way back into the past until it’s 1945.

        It’s a dark and stormy night. Jim comes in from the darkness carrying his precious baby daughter and drops her off at an orphanage.Well, the nuns don’t know what to do with this baby girl the next day so they just decide to call her Jane. And Jane grows up wondering, “Who is my mother? Who is my father?”Anyways, Jim finally gets it together. Well, I don’t want to be a drunk for the rest of my life. So Jim decides to join the TTC, or Time Travelers’ Corps. So Jim has many wondrous exploits in the annals of time.Now Jim is an old man. He thinks to himself, “I've had a good long life. But I want to give myself one final mission. For my last mission, I’m going to go back in time, put on a wig, and impersonate a bartender. To meet a certain bar room drunk who just got into a fistfight because someone said, “Who are you Jim? Who’s your mother? Who’s your father?”