I guess most of us...except perhaps the most rational thinkers have some belief in strange phenomenon...ghosts, spirits, people with weird powers, aliens and ufo's...I've been able to believe that science has the answers to all things...at least not the science of today...and it doesn't stand a chance of getting further with the answers if it refuses to acknowledge the questions!And all peopple do need to believe in something..."There are no atheists in a foxhole."And in anycase I do believe that however far we get we will not find the answers to everything...that as Stephen Hawking said"would be to know the mind of God"...and we are limited by our mortality...perhaps wisdom lies in knowing what we need to know rather than trying to know everything.
Anyway back to unexplained things...I've never been much for ghosts myself...Spooky stories have always seemed to me to be just that...stories! But I do have a fascination for stories of people who can do strange things...read minds...see the future...see the past...heal people with a touch ...telekinesis(a favourite)...after all only 10% of our brain at most is used at any time...who knows what the other 90% is capable of!
And aliens...Its a terribly lonely idea that we are the only intelligent life in the universe...of course it isn't likely...after all no one said it had to be carbon based lifeforms...on a planet anything like ours!All the same...what are the chances of there being life out there...within the range of being able to communicate with us....somewhere along the same range of progress....for all you know they could be at the other end of the universe...still as bacteria...or some form of life that has sentience but no physical structure.
Almost as frightening (And I think that loneliness is the most terrifying thing in the universe)...is the idea that there are aliens already on earth..or that they have been on earth....after all...what chance do we have against a civilization with the capability to travel through vast distances of space;however benevolent their intentions towards us may be, it is still terrifying to think of us at the mercy of some powerful creatures.It was some famous chap who said that when two civilizations meet,one invariably overwhelms the other....it seems that we must either colonialise or be colonised be some alien beings(if they are out there).
And there are those who believe that we are already under invasion...how many stories have we heard of kidnappings...of people beamed up and kept in whilte rooms and having needles inserted into them!I don't give credence to that stuff myself...but if you've read Erik Von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods?",it has an interesting theory that aliens were responsible for the huge geometric Inca signs and other things of the ancients...who to the best of our knowledge should not have had the need or the capability to do such things...but perhaps the questions should be directed not at the stars and the future but deeper into ourselves and our own world.
4 comments:
Very intriguing post. I do think nature maintains a very good balance, left to its own. With the universe being so big, I dont think we need to worry too much abt whether aliens exist or not. I dont think we will ever get to meet them, even if they existed. Having said that, I am very curious and have read a lot on UFOs and other stuff which defies science. Juz goes to show that humans juz cant get the hang of everything. I believe that human knowledge will expoand outwards (solar system and universe n such) and inwards (atom, electrons, lepto quarks n such), but they can never reach the end.
I also have an interesting hypothesis that "Objects of a given complexity can never fully understand the objects of the same or higher complexity". An extension of the same wud reveal that people can never uderstand themselves or their brain. I for one believe everything has a use in this world. A brain will not have 90% unused space (for the simple reason that nature cannot afford to have 9 times redundancy in anything). Probably we are using 90% and we dont know about it. Yes, we are mapping the brain signals, but how do u know thats the way our brain works?
Everything in nature is delicately poised, and it has awesome tolerance limits, enhanced by evolution. With the amount of limitations imposed by science, as it is, I am quite sceptical about the knowledge that we will gain. The amount will definitely increase, but it will never be precise.
Random Access
The search has just begun !!!
@ RA
That was an intriuging hypothesis.
And interesting about the brain not really havein 90% free space...but being used for things we don't understand.
@ Hari
Not total deviation! Those were some pretty interesting ideas!
...refuses to acknowledge the questions...
Interesting point. The scientist starts his experiment determined that there is a logical (read as.. understandable to him) explanation for a particular physical phenomemon. If he finds an answer, he is happy. If not, he tries to bend what he has so that he can try to explain the phenomemon. This looks like a rule based computer system to me. A new rule has to be created to accomodate a newly encountered exception. Many physicists today think that they have explained almost every observable and repeatable physical phenomemon and biology is the only remaining area of exploration once physics is done. It will be interesting to see what happens, though I remain sceptic.
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