I generally think we are not alone, but other life is likely to be so untouchably far away that we might as well be.

Reminds me of my current relationship.

it’s a bit odd that god(s I kind of like the idea of it being a bit of team effort 😉 ) created a huge universe just for us but then confined us to an absolutely minuscule corner of it

I generally think we are not alone, but other life is likely to be so untouchably far away that we might as well be.

I feel the same way too. I think it was Brian Cox that once described the chances of two recognisable lifeforms (aliens could come in any shape or form – they may not be little green men and may not communicate in a format we understand – potentially in a dimension we do not even know exists) passing each other at the same arc of their respective civilizations then reaching out at the same time are infinitesimally small. A bit like two blindfolded people shooting guns (up/down, left/right, ahead/behind) somewhere within a vast open space and expecting the bullets to hit each other at the first attempt.

potentially in a dimension we do not even know exists)

didn’t the recent gravity wave results prove there no extra dimensions.

didn’t the recent gravity wave results prove there no extra dimensions.

Possibly – I hadn’t heard that bit of research – although I don’t see how we can confidently say that other dimensions categorically do not exist. And it ruins the long-held idea I have had for a sci-fi book where we get into a war with aliens that inhabit another dimension and have worked out how to port into ours.

Gravitational waves provide dose of reality about extra dimensions

95 light years in that picture isn’t even as wide as a single pixel.

Yeah. My first reaction was to think that was far far far too big a circle.

It’s sad to think it will be a long long time before some other civilisation gets to hear John Peel.

Tell me more of this ‘God’ you speak of

Well. In the beginning there was The Word. But now Terry Christian is a presenter on Stockport-based radio station Imagine FM

There are an estimated 250 billion stars in our galaxy alone, and the Milky Way is pretty small. Our next door neighbour Andromeda has a trillion. Wikipedia suggests that “Recent estimates of the number of galaxies in the observable universe range from 200 billion (2×10^11) to 2 trillion (2×10^12) or more, containing more stars than all the grains of sand on planet Earth.” And that’s just the bit that we can see.

The Hubble Deep Field photo, a very long exposure taken of one tiny patch of sky with no significant stars in it, shows galaxies almost beyond counting – that’s one tiny segment.

but other life is likely to be so untouchably far away that we might as well be.

The thing is, though, there’s intelligent life on this planet that isn’t only not human, it’s not even primate, not even a mammal, so there’s huge scope for intelligent life out there that we may not recognise, it may not communicate in a way that we could interpret and respond to, because the thought processes are entirely different, and the physical structure of the entity may enable it to produce a variety of different sounds of different frequencies almost simultaneously, plus they may not even use any form of written language, or if they do, the symbology may be almost impossible to interpret.
Those entities may not even have hands or similar, but still have the ability to use tools, and devise ways of creating and adapting tools to changing circumstances.
Such creatures live alongside us now, I see no reason at all for many other planets to have environments capable of sustaining life that may resemble such creatures, where mammals may never have found the ecological niches in which to evolve.
There’s at least two worlds in our solar system with vast quantities of liquid water, where conditions may well have allowed reasonably complex life forms to develop.
Makes you think.