![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Aug. 10th, 2007 10:40 pmI went out to lunch with mother today. I forget how much fun we can have together, how conspiratorial and "Girls Only" it can get. I think we'll have fun when she heads east with me to help me move back into the city.
Dad and I spent some time outside tonight, watching for meteors. They were supposed to be falling through the North-East corner of the sky, so we found ourselves some chairs and gazed skywards for a while. I think I might have seen one, but I've never seen a meteor before, only in movies, and those are hardly a basis for comparison. We also saw something was probably a plane, but unusually high and moving incredibly fast, too fast for a plane, says dad. We theorized that it might be the space station up in orbit, but even if it did pass overhead, it seems unlikely that we could see the blinking lights.
Unsurprisingly, we got into a talk about space and space travel and all sorts of wonderful things. I've thought for a long time that it seems very unlikely that this is the only planet in the whole of the universe that has any life on it. I'm not expecting to meet any aliens, ever, but I can't help but think there's something out there. Dad told me about some scientists (and I'm really sorry that I don't have any links, or any studies I can refer you to) who plugged a bunch of numbers into a bunch of calculations, estimating the number of stars, taking a certain fraction to have planets, a certain fraction to be able to support life (as we know it), and undoubtedly a whole whack of other variables. All of this number crunching led these scientists to hypothesize that in our galaxy, there are approximately 400,000 civilizations. It's certainly not to say they'll all exist now (they assumed the run of a civilization to be 100,000 years) and that they will all have the technology necessary to reach out to the stars, even just to place a very long-distance phone call. But it's an interesting look at things. As a sci-fi fan, I read and watch stories that fill the skies with lots and lots of alien creatures; space is absolutely full. But wouldn't it be something if, when humans finally got up there, there was nothing? The skies were almost completely empty? It's a sobering thought, compared to all of our imaginings.
Dad and I spent some time outside tonight, watching for meteors. They were supposed to be falling through the North-East corner of the sky, so we found ourselves some chairs and gazed skywards for a while. I think I might have seen one, but I've never seen a meteor before, only in movies, and those are hardly a basis for comparison. We also saw something was probably a plane, but unusually high and moving incredibly fast, too fast for a plane, says dad. We theorized that it might be the space station up in orbit, but even if it did pass overhead, it seems unlikely that we could see the blinking lights.
Unsurprisingly, we got into a talk about space and space travel and all sorts of wonderful things. I've thought for a long time that it seems very unlikely that this is the only planet in the whole of the universe that has any life on it. I'm not expecting to meet any aliens, ever, but I can't help but think there's something out there. Dad told me about some scientists (and I'm really sorry that I don't have any links, or any studies I can refer you to) who plugged a bunch of numbers into a bunch of calculations, estimating the number of stars, taking a certain fraction to have planets, a certain fraction to be able to support life (as we know it), and undoubtedly a whole whack of other variables. All of this number crunching led these scientists to hypothesize that in our galaxy, there are approximately 400,000 civilizations. It's certainly not to say they'll all exist now (they assumed the run of a civilization to be 100,000 years) and that they will all have the technology necessary to reach out to the stars, even just to place a very long-distance phone call. But it's an interesting look at things. As a sci-fi fan, I read and watch stories that fill the skies with lots and lots of alien creatures; space is absolutely full. But wouldn't it be something if, when humans finally got up there, there was nothing? The skies were almost completely empty? It's a sobering thought, compared to all of our imaginings.
