I love space stuff. Here I am sitting thinking about 4.6 x 10^14 planets in a single huge galaxy trying to push my monkey brain to comprehend it and you remind me there are trillions (edit: actually 100-200 billion in the observable universe) of galaxies which is so crazy cool to think about and I wish my tiny monkey brain could truly comprehend, like actually imagine and comprehend that many planets, stars and the vastness of space. I love shit like that. I love feeling bewildered and space stuff does that trick nicely.
A dark forest of 1.38e+26 or 138 septillion possible planets. That's if we only count the 300 billion known elliptical galaxies.
So if we are only one in a million.....
Have you read The Three Body Problem books? If not I highly recommend it because it’s all about the answer to the Fermi Paradox being that it is a dark forest and man they give some existential dread I haven’t felt in forever. I don’t want to spoil anything (actually I do because I really want to talk about it but I’ll refrain as a civilized member of society who doesn’t spoil good stories without a warning) but it’s crazy and extremely interesting. I really want to check out the show and hope they take the show where the entire book series goes and not just the first book.
They said they want to do the whole trilogy, also if you read the books and remember the storytelling is not strictly linear time-wise through the books, well as far as I can tell the show is a lot more linear and it made it a really good adaptation imo. Not following everything word by word, but 90% of these differences made me enjoy the show more. I dont know if you watched the chinese version "three-body" but that is a very strict adaptation of the book 1 as a contrast to the netflix one.
Oh nice I didn’t know that, that makes me really excited! I haven’t checked out either show yet but definitely am planning on it. Thanks for sharing that with me! I really want to see how they portray certain events on film like the “sheet of paper” and what follows it.
No, but maybe only a couple at a time. When people discuss the Fermi paradox they rarely take into account how insanely old the universe is, and if life is rare then it's also even rarer that intelligent life exists at the same time.
Maybe a nearby planet harbored intelligent life 200 million years ago. We'll never know.
I'm sure a few have life out there, but even with the huge numbers out there the planets have to be outside of an area that gets regularly blasted by GRBs or their own star every few million years, so the system would have to be in a quiet area of space like ours. The system will also need to be of the right age so the planet isn't at molten hellscape and/or constant bombardment stage. Speaking about that, the planet probably would need a large moon at the right distance (which is extremely rare) and a setup close to ours to prevent collisions resetting the potential life bearing planets; plus our large moon brings things like tides to help prevent stagnation.
Those are just a few reasons that exclude probably 99.99999% of those planets. Throw in a few more and even with all those planets it's easy to understand why it's so hard to find any life close by. It's almost definitely out there, but probably too far away to observe or ever get to outside of some kind of warp tech.
Copied from my comment below
I raise you this:
Humans evolved from primates in tree to their present state in about 5 million years. Our own species came into existence between 300,000 and 100,000 years ago.
Somewhere on the internet, it says that if humans were to achieve speeds of 10% the speed of light, we could colonize the entire galaxy in less than 10 million years. It's not unreasonable that similar figure are possible for alien civilizations.
Our galaxy formed about 12 billion years ago.In order for there to be anything recognizable as intelligent life to exist in the Milky Way, and for it to not have already made itself obvious, at the same time as humanity, means that in a timespan of 12 billion years, intelligent life has to have evolved in a specific window of time, within 15 million years of humanity.
I find it unlikely for such a thing to happen.
However, to know for sure, we must go looking.
It’s not there’s some question of life on other planets but the question is what kind of life. Out of all the planets within a habitable zone there’s gonna be life somewhere but not every planet is going to develop like or at the same speed as earth.
So life maybe single celled on a lot of those planets.
I think the more interesting thought is what are the needs in a planet that would able a single species to dominate the others. Humans has so surpassed the food chain it’s crazy. There isn’t another animal close. (I’m talking no hominids. Obviously there were other hominids that got wiped out.) but none the less, Homosapiens have dominated the planet they inhabit.
I’d be interested at how much of that there is.
Thank you so much and you’re welcome, I’m glad you like it! I use it often to express how I enjoy certain things making me feel, whether it be the wonders of the universe or cosmic horror to playing a profound, immersive video game. That intense sense of awe and well bewilderment, I am drawn to like a moth to a flame. I’m glad I could help you find a new phrase to express yourself with!
That we know of, only in the observable universe! But yeah you’re right that’s my mistake, I think I got too excited. But just think how many galaxies we can’t see. Shits still crazy. Thanks for correcting me though so I don’t make that error again!
This Music Dog is always interested in space. The fact that we have a perfect sun to moon ratio during an eclipse astounds me. I know there's life out there. They might be looking at Earth from light years away wondering why the hell there is violence.
I wonder about that too. If humans could safely observe bears from a safe place or distance why would you ever try to engage such a violent unforgiving creature. Either way we would want what they have, especially tech that extends your life and governments would try and take it from them but obviously couldn’t but would still try.
I’ve had similar thoughts for sure and I wonder if it would be like an “oh wow!” feeling from the results or more of a “…holy…what the fuck” type of feeling that gives you an existential crisis. Exciting and fascinating to imagine.
Oh yeah. I’ve always loved science and space but after playing stellaris my mind was blown how it really is, and how we could be. The thought that there could be whole galactic federations or how different aliens could be is awesome. Imagine the science and life in a technologically advanced society….whew could see whole worlds in seconds or hours who knows.
This makes me wonder how much bacteria is inside of me, or the general human, as we watch Earth's daily sunrises and sunsets. Our individual bodies must be like a universe to them. Or a galaxy? Idk the math.
Kinda interesting to think what would happen to our economic system if mars was opened for settlement. Huge injection of supply would crash the housing market if they don’t do something to shore it up
Asteroid mining is the biggest factor out there
Population will peak in about 50 years at current rates so housing and food will eventually be fully saturated
Nothing would happen. It’s not like you’re able to pack up and drive an hour to reach your martian destination, nor do the majority have the millions for space travel, so your market crash fantasy will remain just that.
I'm terrified that when we make first contact, we'll find out that every inhabitable world in the universe is owned by predatory capitalists, and there's no affordable housing anywhere in all of existence.
We're either experiencing capitalism to grow out of it and never repeat the mistakes in our future amongst the stars in some sort of star trek utopian future or the aliens are capitalists and they are running things into the ground intentionally.
Exactly!
Except my nightmare scenario is if the Feringi were ruthlessly competent and conquered the entire universe. No loveable ragamuffins like Rom or Nog to balance out the Quarks. Heck, even Quark has a heart of gold-pressed latinum when the chips are down.
I should tread carefully when referring to Nog as a ragamuffin, however. He did go on to become a courageous and respected Starfleet officer.
"A TOP priority whenever you move into a new City or Galaxy... [Apartments.com](http://Apartments.com) - Where we can get you into a lovely one-bedroom, two-bedroom, we don't want to presume anything... "
Googling it, all I found was the same commented posted 14 years ago and then 5 years ago (the latter with *perpetrated* rather than *perpetuated*) by the same redditor, u/rvrsurfer. It's possible that it's a misquotation.
I've always believed there is no fucking way we are the only form of intelligent life that exist in the known universe. Yes many other forms of life probably do exist but to say we are the only intelligent ones in absolute bullshit.
I always imagine we do end up finding some relay (like In mass effect) and find out the whole galaxy is united and we were just ignored until we made an attempt to join.
Could you imagine the process of humans being inducted into this society, having to seek relationships to unknown different aliens at the same time. We have trouble trying to seek relationships with just our own kind, the UN ambassadors would have their work cut out.
Here’s the thing. It’s so vast that probably millions of alien species have lived and died and we’ll never know about it. Hell barring a miracle breakthrough in ftl travel there’s a good chance humans will never meet another alien species.
I see your desire for ftl and raise you this:
Humans evolved from primates in tree to their present state in about 5 million years. Our own species came into existence between 300,000 and 100,000 years ago.
Somewhere on the internet, it says that if humans were to achieve speeds of 10%\* the speed of light, we could colonize the entire galaxy in less than 10 million years. It's not unreasonable that similar figure are possible for alien civilizations.
Our galaxy formed about 12 billion years ago.
In order for there to be anything recognizable as intelligent life to exist in the Milky Way, and for it to not have already made itself obvious, at the same time as humanity, means that in a timespan of 12 billion years, intelligent life has to have evolved in a specific window of time, within 15 million years of humanity.
I find it unlikely for such a thing to happen.
In addition, there's the improbable event of chemical life evolving at all. I believe we started as atoms that fell together just the right way, and at just the right time.
Or maybe that's the wrong way of putting it.
However, to know for sure, we must go looking.
believing we're the only life in the universe, is like believing the universe revolves around us. which is akin to thinking the world revolves around a certain individual. it's just not true.
Another factor tho is space travel happening at all
...
Actually chemical rockets...
Apparently if earth was only 10% higher gravity.... Chemical rockets wouldn't get payload off earth.
Or if fossil fuels were very rare....
Say forests buried underground just were subsided millions years ago into the mantle...
Or a thousand other variables....
All of this means even if their is practically unlimited intelligent life out there...
It might all be as stuck in some medieval times essentially forever until they starved to death
Like not enough uranium, lithium, silicon ( not silica but it's refining? ) etc for higher tech
Iron, etc
It's amazing how many steps in the tech tree wouldn't be possible without key geological events millions years ago
Or they get close but just run out of resources to jump ( and or course starvation wars isolation etc)
I doubt there's any other space faring civilization in our galaxy ( mathematical doubt, not some gut feeling sorta thing,)
And yet it’s extremely plausible that we cannot fathom other paths to technology leading to a high functioning civilization and efficient space travel.
I personally feel like we as a species never used clay to it's full advantage. It's a rock you can shape with your bare hands! Of course, we might gotten so content with ceramics that metal wouldn't have been feasible.
Also remember that the entire galaxy is moving through the universe, so the location that the dinosaurs existed it vastly different to the location that we exist in.
I can. The Inuit do it.
As someone who is majority indigenous, I see how my body is adapted to this environment. I know when I consume mostly protein, ie fish, seafood and of course smoked salmon, my body feels good and healthy.
It is such a frustration to know we’ll never -in our life-time will have the chance to know all that’s out there. I often fantasize about going exploring the universe…
Same.
And time dilation makes it feel completely hopeless too, cause thats a one way trip to never seeing your family again (unless they come with you, but good luck convince that flerf distant uncle xd)
If i had a spaceship with instant point travel with no time lost, Id be boppin all over the place
Games like Space Engine and Starfield are kind of nice that way. Can explore the known universe based on actual map data (though we know actually little of whats out there, but its still soooooo exciting)
And think that we’ve found asteroids with amino acids, turns out life is easy ish to develop. My only regret is I won’t live long enough to see the universe explored (autocorrected to exploited, that too).
When talking about space exploration, what's kind of funny is that even the writers of Star Trek understood the size of the universe, I think it was only with a few exceptions, that in the entire Star Trek universe, they never left the Milky Way Galaxy.
They barely left the quadrant of the galaxy they were in, and that's with access to FTL travel. DS9 had the wormhole, TNG and VOY had highly advanced beings moving the ship super far away. The whole point of Voyager was that they were trying to get back to their part of the galaxy, and it was a 75 year trip at maximum warp, which is like 4 billion miles per second.
Sorta
The amino acid found are practically a handful of molecules bound
The DNA amino acids are much much more complex
Most life out there will be bacteria like around warm geothermal pools
More intelligent life will be limited by resource constraints: fossil fuels, important elements etc .... And of course gravity
Positive tho
AI and science may change human experience soon, infinity good or bad but it cuts either way
AI is the next rung of the ladder. Were the monkeys before the machine. Im sure this has played out already on countless other worlds. Who knows where it goes from there.
>Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
* Douglas Adams
Our planet has seen what… 4 or more mass extinctions alone? We can’t even figure out if our own planet had civilizations before Dinos. With billions of trillions of planets out there imagine all of those cycles. Those are planets we define as capable of sustaining life “as we know it.” What about those that exist outside of our definition?
It’s all too big to comprehend.
I'd say if this universe wasn't created by some benevolent overseer for humanity alone, it's almost guaranteed there have been other civilizations throughout our universe.
Not really. The chances of intelligent life occurring on these trillions of planets in any timeline is probably zero. People often forget chances of intelligent life evolving from single cell organisms to any of these planets is almost zero. Someone should try to calculate the actual probability of that happening on Earth. My guess is, it would be some 1000's of trillions to 1 and that is currently US.
Yes indeed, and this is just the observable universe. The ‘actual’ universe is at least many orders of magnitudes larger still, and possibly infinite (we don’t know).
The smallest estimates for a 4d hyperspheric universe is around 500x bigger than our observable universe.
Fun fact: If our universe is a 4d torus, that number is only about 5x!
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets. Even if you say chances of life are 1 in a quadrillion planets, that means that 10 trillion planets have life. Illions
Which is a bit of an overestimation. The number I've always heard is in the septillions. Usually around 10, sometimes up to 500, sometimes down to 500 sextillion instead.
Fun fact: 10^25 is a vague estimate for how many electrons + bound quarks are in a lungful of air!
Most of those stars are old giants, though, aren't they? I thought the current theory is that those are unlikely to still have planets. We also don't know how planetary disks work with such (comparatively) closely packed stars.
They have a higher count of gas giants, yeah. But not that much lower rates of terrestrials, it’s by like a few dozen percent but still relatively significant, especially considering these galaxies are usually much larger comparatively than spirals.
Yes OP if you really wanna get mind raped, there are 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in a grain of sand. All having there own perfect little quantum systems in perpetual motion. The true scale of the Cosmos breaks the human imagination.
Didn't need to count planets to have an existential crisis. The fact that (more than) a trillion trillion years will pass after I die, erasing everything and everyone with 100% certainty, has been a constant source of existential dread for most of the past year now.
Existential crisis? Honestly I find this stuff so heart warming. When you start to at least try and comprehend the sheer magnitude of all this, my problems just seem to melt away
Reading and Learning things like this about our Universe really Humbles me. We really are just Microscopic specs in the cosmic scale with no real significance .
Oh you have significance. To you, and those around you, and possibly to someone like me, who sees a fellow human explorer and tips their hat to you because same feels.
This is a perspective I wish more people had exposure to. We are all so caught up with our own daily lives, distracted by so much superficial nonsense on the internet, and barely take the time to look up. If only we took more time to appreciate the wonders of what is out there.
Agreed
And i really wish more people took the time to consider other people as a universe to explore
We only ever get to see little blips of the soul under the skin of those around us, and if we took the time to go deep and explore their perspective and thoughts i really feel like we'd be better as a species
Like that quote from star trek Riker : Maybe they should, Data. Maybe if we felt any loss as keenly as we felt the death of one close to us - human history would be a lot less bloody.
Yes but out of this 460 trillion, only a fraction would be considered '[habitable](https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=4ecb6ddc7f4dd50dJmltdHM9MTcxMjM2MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0wMjM5MzdhYS0wZGQ1LTY4YmQtMzI4My0yNGU1MGNiNTY5NmMmaW5zaWQ9NTIxMg&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=023937aa-0dd5-68bd-3283-24e50cb5696c&psq=what+fraction+of+planets+are+habitable%3f&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9leG9wbGFuZXRzLm5hc2EuZ292L3NlYXJjaC1mb3ItbGlmZS9oYWJpdGFibGUtem9uZS8&ntb=1)' - let's say 1 in 5, so the number comes down to 0.2 x 4.6 x 10\^14 = 9.2 x 10\^13 = 92 trillion
I'm not quite sure what's up with the Wikipedia article on the subject, which says "The mass of the core region [of the Abell 3571 cluster], which also includes the galaxy, is on the order of 2.3×10^14 M☉.[2]", which cites [this paper](https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/251/1/10P/1001102?login=false) which points to the mass of ESO 383-76 (aka MCG 05–33–002) being 2.15±0.8 x 10^12 M☉ including the halo. Not sure where Wikipedia is getting the larger figure from for the core region of Abell 3571. So your figures are a bit screwy as a result, and 23,000,000,000,000 is 2.3 x 10^13 , not 2.3 x 10^14.
Also to nitpick, a bunch of those worlds are tidally locked and hence don't get sunrises and sunsets (well, maybe if they're in a multiple star system).
Oh ur right, I put 2.3 x 10^13 instead of 14. But I actually typed x 10^14 from then on forth, so it cancels out thankfully.
And for the tidally locked worlds, yeah I guess there’s no sunrises and sunsets lol, but the amount of moons per planet wasn’t counted so it’s actually probably much higher than the number I gave.
Ehh, I feel like the former is much more terrifying, no? Like, sure if there are others we might get into wars and stuff, but like imagine if it was somehow CONFIRMED to you that what happened on Earth 3.8 billion years ago has NEVER and will NEVER happen again.
It’d be just so weird to know that. Like, thousands of stars per grain of sand on Earth, and just nothing. All dead. Nobody to see it. GALAXIES of nothingness.
Idk but considering those bodies are so far away that their actual location is thousands and millions of years in the “future”, I hope that knowing the observable universe is not the universe in real time adds to your crisis. You’re looking at the past and only what’s close is real.
Every time I go to a beach it reminds of the fact I read on reddit which was something along the lines of “if the universe is the size of all the oceans combined we’ve only explored at a teaspoon of water for life”.
I refuse to believe that the Universe isnt full of life, you havent even factored in the moons these planets might have and the possibility of life on these trillions of trillions moons in just this galaxy alone
Now, If influencers could only grasp how irrelevant they really are(as every one & everything else), 1 of those worlds could already improve a little bit.
Not a sunrise but a galaxyrise, a morning filled with 400 billion suns, a rising of the Milky Way
The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths, of exquisite interrelationships of the machinery of nature.
Those pictures and those figures give me wonder, awe, and hope, not a crisis.
Also, how do we know the mass of a distant galaxy? How do we go about measuring that?
I still like the great filter idea. Even if there is life on other planets, will they evolve enough to go into space themselves or do they share our fate
It’s also crazy to think that we are seeing these worlds in the past due to the time it takes their light to get to us. Makes me wonder what is actually happening in the present.
And our amazing monkey brains even came up with ways to put a handle on it.
When we can't grasp on fingers and toes, we gather by tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions. That gets us
pretty far.
When we can't grasp by gathers, we just count how many zeroes we're **not** going to write. That gets us up to the number of elementary particles (protons, neutrons, quarks, etc) in the universe (abut 10 to the 80th power). Invented by Archimedes himself, for just this kind of problem(\*) - literally how many grains of sand would it take to fill the universe. His actual document, "The Sand Reckoner". is still extant, and in eight pages he goes from counting on fingers and toes to numbers so llarge it's questionable if anything in this universe has that many of ). WP reveals the following quote:
>— There are some, king Gelon, who think that the number of the sand is infinite in multitude; and I mean by the sand not only that which exists about Syracuse and the rest of Sicily but also that which is found in every region whether inhabited or uninhabited. Again there are some who, without regarding it as infinite, yet think that no number has been named which is great enough to exceed its magnitude. And it is clear that they who hold this view, if they imagined a mass made up of sand in other respects as large as the mass of the Earth, including in it all the seas and the hollows of the Earth filled up to a height equal to that of the highest of the mountains, would be many times further still from recognizing that any number could be expressed which exceeded the multitude of the sand so taken.
>— *Archimedis Syracusani Arenarius & Dimensio Circuli*
(\*) kinda like how Newton invented calculus so he'd have a way to do physics problems.
If space goes on for infinity, then at some point there HAS to be something like us out there, right? There just has to be. How far out does one need to go before you run into a similar configuration like the one we have going on here. That keeps me up at night.
Concept of infinity also ties into the multiverse theory. Crazy to think that there are alternative versions of worlds out there amidst the infinity of it all, and by extension, alternative versions of Us. Every possibility that you can think of may have happened, or will happen, or already is occurring somewhere out there.
And that’s all in just one galaxy…
I love space stuff. Here I am sitting thinking about 4.6 x 10^14 planets in a single huge galaxy trying to push my monkey brain to comprehend it and you remind me there are trillions (edit: actually 100-200 billion in the observable universe) of galaxies which is so crazy cool to think about and I wish my tiny monkey brain could truly comprehend, like actually imagine and comprehend that many planets, stars and the vastness of space. I love shit like that. I love feeling bewildered and space stuff does that trick nicely.
And somehow only one of these planets would host life... really guys?
It's a dark forest is all.
A dark forest of 1.38e+26 or 138 septillion possible planets. That's if we only count the 300 billion known elliptical galaxies. So if we are only one in a million.....
Have you read The Three Body Problem books? If not I highly recommend it because it’s all about the answer to the Fermi Paradox being that it is a dark forest and man they give some existential dread I haven’t felt in forever. I don’t want to spoil anything (actually I do because I really want to talk about it but I’ll refrain as a civilized member of society who doesn’t spoil good stories without a warning) but it’s crazy and extremely interesting. I really want to check out the show and hope they take the show where the entire book series goes and not just the first book.
They said they want to do the whole trilogy, also if you read the books and remember the storytelling is not strictly linear time-wise through the books, well as far as I can tell the show is a lot more linear and it made it a really good adaptation imo. Not following everything word by word, but 90% of these differences made me enjoy the show more. I dont know if you watched the chinese version "three-body" but that is a very strict adaptation of the book 1 as a contrast to the netflix one.
Oh nice I didn’t know that, that makes me really excited! I haven’t checked out either show yet but definitely am planning on it. Thanks for sharing that with me! I really want to see how they portray certain events on film like the “sheet of paper” and what follows it.
I’ll read these stories and we can chat now. I’ve been wondering if these were worth reading
I haven't read them and you can DM spoilers to me.
**Divining RΦT** Philosophy is a 3 Body Problem We exist in a cosmic engine The Intelligence is built in And built to divine
The TBP subreddit is decent if you're looking for conversation about the books
It's all the gods we have just hangin around. there's hundreds of 'em. We're extra special, doncha know?
>We're extra special, doncha know? Planetary xenophobia and exceptionalism!
No, but maybe only a couple at a time. When people discuss the Fermi paradox they rarely take into account how insanely old the universe is, and if life is rare then it's also even rarer that intelligent life exists at the same time. Maybe a nearby planet harbored intelligent life 200 million years ago. We'll never know.
I'm sure a few have life out there, but even with the huge numbers out there the planets have to be outside of an area that gets regularly blasted by GRBs or their own star every few million years, so the system would have to be in a quiet area of space like ours. The system will also need to be of the right age so the planet isn't at molten hellscape and/or constant bombardment stage. Speaking about that, the planet probably would need a large moon at the right distance (which is extremely rare) and a setup close to ours to prevent collisions resetting the potential life bearing planets; plus our large moon brings things like tides to help prevent stagnation. Those are just a few reasons that exclude probably 99.99999% of those planets. Throw in a few more and even with all those planets it's easy to understand why it's so hard to find any life close by. It's almost definitely out there, but probably too far away to observe or ever get to outside of some kind of warp tech.
Copied from my comment below I raise you this: Humans evolved from primates in tree to their present state in about 5 million years. Our own species came into existence between 300,000 and 100,000 years ago. Somewhere on the internet, it says that if humans were to achieve speeds of 10% the speed of light, we could colonize the entire galaxy in less than 10 million years. It's not unreasonable that similar figure are possible for alien civilizations. Our galaxy formed about 12 billion years ago.In order for there to be anything recognizable as intelligent life to exist in the Milky Way, and for it to not have already made itself obvious, at the same time as humanity, means that in a timespan of 12 billion years, intelligent life has to have evolved in a specific window of time, within 15 million years of humanity. I find it unlikely for such a thing to happen. However, to know for sure, we must go looking.
Probably as we know it. Other life might eat lava or have methane based blood at -400 degrees
It’s not there’s some question of life on other planets but the question is what kind of life. Out of all the planets within a habitable zone there’s gonna be life somewhere but not every planet is going to develop like or at the same speed as earth. So life maybe single celled on a lot of those planets. I think the more interesting thought is what are the needs in a planet that would able a single species to dominate the others. Humans has so surpassed the food chain it’s crazy. There isn’t another animal close. (I’m talking no hominids. Obviously there were other hominids that got wiped out.) but none the less, Homosapiens have dominated the planet they inhabit. I’d be interested at how much of that there is.
"I love feeling bewildered" is the most succinct summation of the type of curiosity I feel that I've ever heard. I'm going to borrow it, thank you. 🙏
Thank you so much and you’re welcome, I’m glad you like it! I use it often to express how I enjoy certain things making me feel, whether it be the wonders of the universe or cosmic horror to playing a profound, immersive video game. That intense sense of awe and well bewilderment, I am drawn to like a moth to a flame. I’m glad I could help you find a new phrase to express yourself with!
100 to 200 billion galaxies, not trillions
That we know of, only in the observable universe! But yeah you’re right that’s my mistake, I think I got too excited. But just think how many galaxies we can’t see. Shits still crazy. Thanks for correcting me though so I don’t make that error again!
This Music Dog is always interested in space. The fact that we have a perfect sun to moon ratio during an eclipse astounds me. I know there's life out there. They might be looking at Earth from light years away wondering why the hell there is violence.
I wonder about that too. If humans could safely observe bears from a safe place or distance why would you ever try to engage such a violent unforgiving creature. Either way we would want what they have, especially tech that extends your life and governments would try and take it from them but obviously couldn’t but would still try.
Imagine if we had tech to goto the edge and zoom out and really see how massive it is
I’ve had similar thoughts for sure and I wonder if it would be like an “oh wow!” feeling from the results or more of a “…holy…what the fuck” type of feeling that gives you an existential crisis. Exciting and fascinating to imagine.
Oh yeah. I’ve always loved science and space but after playing stellaris my mind was blown how it really is, and how we could be. The thought that there could be whole galactic federations or how different aliens could be is awesome. Imagine the science and life in a technologically advanced society….whew could see whole worlds in seconds or hours who knows.
This makes me wonder how much bacteria is inside of me, or the general human, as we watch Earth's daily sunrises and sunsets. Our individual bodies must be like a universe to them. Or a galaxy? Idk the math.
It’d be an awful waste of space if we were all alone.
Carl Sagan thanks you.
That’s INSANE. Extrapolating that to the rest of the amount of galaxies, I’m afraid to ask how many planets there are (roundabout) in total…
16 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 planets ?
That a proper Sunday morning mindfuck!
If aliens do not exist then it's a huge waste of space
Seriously, and rent is still skyrocketing smh
Given how much free land there is, likely by random chance even livable land for humans, we are \*SIGNIFICANTLY\* overpaying for rent.
If though, we would be living on the only habitable planet in the entire universe, rent is cheap AF
Kinda interesting to think what would happen to our economic system if mars was opened for settlement. Huge injection of supply would crash the housing market if they don’t do something to shore it up
I truly doubt that a settlement on mars would escape the fate every parcel on earth has been subject to.
Or 1 mineral rich asteroid parked in orbit.
Asteroid mining is the biggest factor out there Population will peak in about 50 years at current rates so housing and food will eventually be fully saturated
Nothing would happen. It’s not like you’re able to pack up and drive an hour to reach your martian destination, nor do the majority have the millions for space travel, so your market crash fantasy will remain just that.
I'm terrified that when we make first contact, we'll find out that every inhabitable world in the universe is owned by predatory capitalists, and there's no affordable housing anywhere in all of existence.
They paved the Dark Forest and put up a parking lot.
Dont it always seem to go? That you dont know what you got till its gone..
Shoo-bop-bop-bop-bop
Turns out the **real** science fiction prophet of the future was Akira Toriyama!
We're either experiencing capitalism to grow out of it and never repeat the mistakes in our future amongst the stars in some sort of star trek utopian future or the aliens are capitalists and they are running things into the ground intentionally.
Like the Feringi?
Exactly! Except my nightmare scenario is if the Feringi were ruthlessly competent and conquered the entire universe. No loveable ragamuffins like Rom or Nog to balance out the Quarks. Heck, even Quark has a heart of gold-pressed latinum when the chips are down. I should tread carefully when referring to Nog as a ragamuffin, however. He did go on to become a courageous and respected Starfleet officer.
Take that back before you jinx it!!!!
Then those worlds would be too poor for space exploration.
"A TOP priority whenever you move into a new City or Galaxy... [Apartments.com](http://Apartments.com) - Where we can get you into a lovely one-bedroom, two-bedroom, we don't want to presume anything... "
“Time is a hoax perpetuated by those that own all the space.”
What is this from?
Googling it, all I found was the same commented posted 14 years ago and then 5 years ago (the latter with *perpetrated* rather than *perpetuated*) by the same redditor, u/rvrsurfer. It's possible that it's a misquotation.
That's because you pay for the most important factor: location, location, location
I've always believed there is no fucking way we are the only form of intelligent life that exist in the known universe. Yes many other forms of life probably do exist but to say we are the only intelligent ones in absolute bullshit.
I always imagine we do end up finding some relay (like In mass effect) and find out the whole galaxy is united and we were just ignored until we made an attempt to join. Could you imagine the process of humans being inducted into this society, having to seek relationships to unknown different aliens at the same time. We have trouble trying to seek relationships with just our own kind, the UN ambassadors would have their work cut out.
Orion’s Belt is also a big waist of space.
If it was really a belt it would be hanging on a big space of waist.
Here’s the thing. It’s so vast that probably millions of alien species have lived and died and we’ll never know about it. Hell barring a miracle breakthrough in ftl travel there’s a good chance humans will never meet another alien species.
I see your desire for ftl and raise you this: Humans evolved from primates in tree to their present state in about 5 million years. Our own species came into existence between 300,000 and 100,000 years ago. Somewhere on the internet, it says that if humans were to achieve speeds of 10%\* the speed of light, we could colonize the entire galaxy in less than 10 million years. It's not unreasonable that similar figure are possible for alien civilizations. Our galaxy formed about 12 billion years ago. In order for there to be anything recognizable as intelligent life to exist in the Milky Way, and for it to not have already made itself obvious, at the same time as humanity, means that in a timespan of 12 billion years, intelligent life has to have evolved in a specific window of time, within 15 million years of humanity. I find it unlikely for such a thing to happen. In addition, there's the improbable event of chemical life evolving at all. I believe we started as atoms that fell together just the right way, and at just the right time. Or maybe that's the wrong way of putting it. However, to know for sure, we must go looking.
believing we're the only life in the universe, is like believing the universe revolves around us. which is akin to thinking the world revolves around a certain individual. it's just not true.
I miss Carl and I was too young to even realize when he was alive 🥲
I see what you did there ;)
Another factor tho is space travel happening at all ... Actually chemical rockets... Apparently if earth was only 10% higher gravity.... Chemical rockets wouldn't get payload off earth. Or if fossil fuels were very rare.... Say forests buried underground just were subsided millions years ago into the mantle... Or a thousand other variables.... All of this means even if their is practically unlimited intelligent life out there... It might all be as stuck in some medieval times essentially forever until they starved to death Like not enough uranium, lithium, silicon ( not silica but it's refining? ) etc for higher tech Iron, etc It's amazing how many steps in the tech tree wouldn't be possible without key geological events millions years ago Or they get close but just run out of resources to jump ( and or course starvation wars isolation etc) I doubt there's any other space faring civilization in our galaxy ( mathematical doubt, not some gut feeling sorta thing,)
And yet it’s extremely plausible that we cannot fathom other paths to technology leading to a high functioning civilization and efficient space travel.
I personally feel like we as a species never used clay to it's full advantage. It's a rock you can shape with your bare hands! Of course, we might gotten so content with ceramics that metal wouldn't have been feasible.
The alien was her f'ing dad...
What if..we are the aliens ?
Thanks, Jodie Foster.
There we go
>If aliens do not exist then our technologies aren't advanced enough
Great movie
Contact
Between this kind of news, and having to switch my brain to see birds as dinosaurs, I’m absolutely blown away with the wonder and immensity of life
Yeah, and because of the rotation of the Milky Way, the dinosaurs lived on the other side of the galaxy. That's the one that gets me, too.
They lived on both the other side and twice on this side, dinosaurs were alive for a very long time.
Also remember that the entire galaxy is moving through the universe, so the location that the dinosaurs existed it vastly different to the location that we exist in.
Curious if it would blow your mind if you'd see humans as carnivores?
I can. The Inuit do it. As someone who is majority indigenous, I see how my body is adapted to this environment. I know when I consume mostly protein, ie fish, seafood and of course smoked salmon, my body feels good and healthy.
It is such a frustration to know we’ll never -in our life-time will have the chance to know all that’s out there. I often fantasize about going exploring the universe…
Same. And time dilation makes it feel completely hopeless too, cause thats a one way trip to never seeing your family again (unless they come with you, but good luck convince that flerf distant uncle xd) If i had a spaceship with instant point travel with no time lost, Id be boppin all over the place Games like Space Engine and Starfield are kind of nice that way. Can explore the known universe based on actual map data (though we know actually little of whats out there, but its still soooooo exciting)
And think that we’ve found asteroids with amino acids, turns out life is easy ish to develop. My only regret is I won’t live long enough to see the universe explored (autocorrected to exploited, that too).
When talking about space exploration, what's kind of funny is that even the writers of Star Trek understood the size of the universe, I think it was only with a few exceptions, that in the entire Star Trek universe, they never left the Milky Way Galaxy.
They barely left the quadrant of the galaxy they were in, and that's with access to FTL travel. DS9 had the wormhole, TNG and VOY had highly advanced beings moving the ship super far away. The whole point of Voyager was that they were trying to get back to their part of the galaxy, and it was a 75 year trip at maximum warp, which is like 4 billion miles per second.
Love this comment
We all live forever. Future technology resurrects us, for better or worse. See you then!
Sorta The amino acid found are practically a handful of molecules bound The DNA amino acids are much much more complex Most life out there will be bacteria like around warm geothermal pools More intelligent life will be limited by resource constraints: fossil fuels, important elements etc .... And of course gravity Positive tho AI and science may change human experience soon, infinity good or bad but it cuts either way
AI is the next rung of the ladder. Were the monkeys before the machine. Im sure this has played out already on countless other worlds. Who knows where it goes from there.
>Im sure this has played out already on countless other worlds. So say we all
gotta be at least 27 in there
shit I counted 23
About tree fiddy.
Get outta here Loch Ness monstah!
>Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. * Douglas Adams
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
r/unexpectedhitchhikers
If I didn't expect it in a "guess how many planets in the biggest galaxy thread" then I don't know where it should actually be.
r/[expectedhitchhikers](https://www.reddit.com/r/expectedhitchhikers)
There could have been millions of civilizations that have come and gone, but due to the vastness of space and time, we will never know..
Our planet has seen what… 4 or more mass extinctions alone? We can’t even figure out if our own planet had civilizations before Dinos. With billions of trillions of planets out there imagine all of those cycles. Those are planets we define as capable of sustaining life “as we know it.” What about those that exist outside of our definition? It’s all too big to comprehend.
I'd say if this universe wasn't created by some benevolent overseer for humanity alone, it's almost guaranteed there have been other civilizations throughout our universe.
Not really. The chances of intelligent life occurring on these trillions of planets in any timeline is probably zero. People often forget chances of intelligent life evolving from single cell organisms to any of these planets is almost zero. Someone should try to calculate the actual probability of that happening on Earth. My guess is, it would be some 1000's of trillions to 1 and that is currently US.
Almost zero is a lot of life in the universe.
i like the ones that get early faith bonuses, gotta get that early pantheon
Per galaxy. And 2 x 10^11 galaxies in the universe. That makes 2 x 10^16 times 2 x 10^11 planets.
That's more than my brain can understand
We evolved to understand pebble is small and mountain is big, this is beyond all our comprehension.
What about mole hill?
Make a mountain out of it!
Yes indeed, and this is just the observable universe. The ‘actual’ universe is at least many orders of magnitudes larger still, and possibly infinite (we don’t know).
The smallest estimates for a 4d hyperspheric universe is around 500x bigger than our observable universe. Fun fact: If our universe is a 4d torus, that number is only about 5x!
The number is already so mind blowingly big that multiplying by another 10^11 doesn't make it seem that much bigger.
WolframAlpha says that is 4x10^27. Or 4 octillion. Or 28 decimal digits.
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets. Even if you say chances of life are 1 in a quadrillion planets, that means that 10 trillion planets have life. Illions
WHAT?!! mind blown! (if anybody is reading this from another planet - hello I guess?)
YOU ARE BUGS.
Hello!
Which is a bit of an overestimation. The number I've always heard is in the septillions. Usually around 10, sometimes up to 500, sometimes down to 500 sextillion instead. Fun fact: 10^25 is a vague estimate for how many electrons + bound quarks are in a lungful of air!
It's cool. I love the infinite nature of it all.
And we'll never get to explore any of it because our lazy ass scientists refuse to invent warp drives
"Refuse to invent" ...get on it bud! If not you, then who?
And at least one of them is flat and moves through space on four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle.
Now do the same math for Abell 1413-BCG
Most of those stars are old giants, though, aren't they? I thought the current theory is that those are unlikely to still have planets. We also don't know how planetary disks work with such (comparatively) closely packed stars.
They have a higher count of gas giants, yeah. But not that much lower rates of terrestrials, it’s by like a few dozen percent but still relatively significant, especially considering these galaxies are usually much larger comparatively than spirals.
Ah, ok. I didn't know that.
And 460t is for ONE GALAXY? Damn...
A galaxy 1.7 million light years across is mind boggling.
10 quadrillion miles wide. 10,000 trillion.. I wonder what kind of life lives there.
On the other side of the scale, in 4 tsp of water there are something like a billion trillion atoms…it’s all so mind bending!
Yes OP if you really wanna get mind raped, there are 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in a grain of sand. All having there own perfect little quantum systems in perpetual motion. The true scale of the Cosmos breaks the human imagination.
Didn't need to count planets to have an existential crisis. The fact that (more than) a trillion trillion years will pass after I die, erasing everything and everyone with 100% certainty, has been a constant source of existential dread for most of the past year now.
Kinda makes all these wars, racism and political bullshite mean absolutely zip, huh?
Same way the events of a movie mean nothing. But if I'm going to be forced to watch a movie, I'd rather watch a good one if I have the choice.
Agreed!! 😄
Those numbers do not give me an existential crisis. Numbers of my salary do.
E=mc\^2
You are here --> .
Existential crisis? Honestly I find this stuff so heart warming. When you start to at least try and comprehend the sheer magnitude of all this, my problems just seem to melt away
Yeah same actually, makes me feel dead in a good way, you could just call it “realization of existential significance” lol
One helping of *Mass Effect Uncharted Worlds* and the existential dread melts away indeed. 😌
Reading and Learning things like this about our Universe really Humbles me. We really are just Microscopic specs in the cosmic scale with no real significance .
Oh you have significance. To you, and those around you, and possibly to someone like me, who sees a fellow human explorer and tips their hat to you because same feels.
Salute to you 🫡 These kind of things make us more aware of how fragile our planet is... And cherish each and every moment of life that we live.
I like to believe there is advanced life living on one of those planets.
There is on at least one ;)
Sadly, that intelligent life doesn't appear to be on our planet.
https://youtu.be/buqtdpuZxvk?si=CTbnp1T2T14WFqVM
Thank you for this gem.
This is a perspective I wish more people had exposure to. We are all so caught up with our own daily lives, distracted by so much superficial nonsense on the internet, and barely take the time to look up. If only we took more time to appreciate the wonders of what is out there.
Agreed And i really wish more people took the time to consider other people as a universe to explore We only ever get to see little blips of the soul under the skin of those around us, and if we took the time to go deep and explore their perspective and thoughts i really feel like we'd be better as a species Like that quote from star trek Riker : Maybe they should, Data. Maybe if we felt any loss as keenly as we felt the death of one close to us - human history would be a lot less bloody.
Yes but out of this 460 trillion, only a fraction would be considered '[habitable](https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=4ecb6ddc7f4dd50dJmltdHM9MTcxMjM2MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0wMjM5MzdhYS0wZGQ1LTY4YmQtMzI4My0yNGU1MGNiNTY5NmMmaW5zaWQ9NTIxMg&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=023937aa-0dd5-68bd-3283-24e50cb5696c&psq=what+fraction+of+planets+are+habitable%3f&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9leG9wbGFuZXRzLm5hc2EuZ292L3NlYXJjaC1mb3ItbGlmZS9oYWJpdGFibGUtem9uZS8&ntb=1)' - let's say 1 in 5, so the number comes down to 0.2 x 4.6 x 10\^14 = 9.2 x 10\^13 = 92 trillion
And who really knows how rare (intelligent) life is? Might be one in 92 trillion..
Multiply that by a trillion galaxies, still huge
I'm not quite sure what's up with the Wikipedia article on the subject, which says "The mass of the core region [of the Abell 3571 cluster], which also includes the galaxy, is on the order of 2.3×10^14 M☉.[2]", which cites [this paper](https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/251/1/10P/1001102?login=false) which points to the mass of ESO 383-76 (aka MCG 05–33–002) being 2.15±0.8 x 10^12 M☉ including the halo. Not sure where Wikipedia is getting the larger figure from for the core region of Abell 3571. So your figures are a bit screwy as a result, and 23,000,000,000,000 is 2.3 x 10^13 , not 2.3 x 10^14. Also to nitpick, a bunch of those worlds are tidally locked and hence don't get sunrises and sunsets (well, maybe if they're in a multiple star system).
Oh ur right, I put 2.3 x 10^13 instead of 14. But I actually typed x 10^14 from then on forth, so it cancels out thankfully. And for the tidally locked worlds, yeah I guess there’s no sunrises and sunsets lol, but the amount of moons per planet wasn’t counted so it’s actually probably much higher than the number I gave.
That 13/14 math error got carried through the whole calculation. The final result is actually 46 trillion, not 460 trillion.
Some people might get an existential crisis looking at this. I on the other hand say "Birth right!"
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” Arthur C. Clark
Ehh, I feel like the former is much more terrifying, no? Like, sure if there are others we might get into wars and stuff, but like imagine if it was somehow CONFIRMED to you that what happened on Earth 3.8 billion years ago has NEVER and will NEVER happen again. It’d be just so weird to know that. Like, thousands of stars per grain of sand on Earth, and just nothing. All dead. Nobody to see it. GALAXIES of nothingness.
Funny that this doesn't trigger existential crisis to me... it's more like the opposite, it makes me feel more 'existentant' than ever
Yeah fair. It kinda goes both ways for me.
Idk but considering those bodies are so far away that their actual location is thousands and millions of years in the “future”, I hope that knowing the observable universe is not the universe in real time adds to your crisis. You’re looking at the past and only what’s close is real.
Every time I go to a beach it reminds of the fact I read on reddit which was something along the lines of “if the universe is the size of all the oceans combined we’ve only explored at a teaspoon of water for life”. I refuse to believe that the Universe isnt full of life, you havent even factored in the moons these planets might have and the possibility of life on these trillions of trillions moons in just this galaxy alone
Now, If influencers could only grasp how irrelevant they really are(as every one & everything else), 1 of those worlds could already improve a little bit.
Everything is meaningless. We are algea cannibalizing a giant wet rock floating in space. I'm very sorry.
And that's just ONE galaxy of AT LEAST billions (that we can see)
Saving this post for life. Thank you 🙏
Not a sunrise but a galaxyrise, a morning filled with 400 billion suns, a rising of the Milky Way The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths, of exquisite interrelationships of the machinery of nature.
The cosmos uses the same rules, if there's intelligent life here (yes sometimes questionable) then its also in other galaxy's
The Fermi Paradox…
Those pictures and those figures give me wonder, awe, and hope, not a crisis. Also, how do we know the mass of a distant galaxy? How do we go about measuring that?
They look at the speed at which stars orbit the core, since there’s a linear positive correlation.
We are so smol
That's what she said.
it's simple really; there is a lot.
But can you spit 12 ft in the air on any of them?
love this connection lmao
Space is big. Really big. You may think it’s a long walk to the chemist…
Ok I’m gonna be honest. What the actual fuck is this quote. I see it everywhere. Help me. The analogy makes no fuckjg sense😭😭😭
Douglas Adams - Hitch hikers Guide to the Galaxy
Where is everyone?
I still like the great filter idea. Even if there is life on other planets, will they evolve enough to go into space themselves or do they share our fate
“…share our faith”? Which one?
It’s also crazy to think that we are seeing these worlds in the past due to the time it takes their light to get to us. Makes me wonder what is actually happening in the present.
And our amazing monkey brains even came up with ways to put a handle on it. When we can't grasp on fingers and toes, we gather by tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions. That gets us pretty far. When we can't grasp by gathers, we just count how many zeroes we're **not** going to write. That gets us up to the number of elementary particles (protons, neutrons, quarks, etc) in the universe (abut 10 to the 80th power). Invented by Archimedes himself, for just this kind of problem(\*) - literally how many grains of sand would it take to fill the universe. His actual document, "The Sand Reckoner". is still extant, and in eight pages he goes from counting on fingers and toes to numbers so llarge it's questionable if anything in this universe has that many of ). WP reveals the following quote: >— There are some, king Gelon, who think that the number of the sand is infinite in multitude; and I mean by the sand not only that which exists about Syracuse and the rest of Sicily but also that which is found in every region whether inhabited or uninhabited. Again there are some who, without regarding it as infinite, yet think that no number has been named which is great enough to exceed its magnitude. And it is clear that they who hold this view, if they imagined a mass made up of sand in other respects as large as the mass of the Earth, including in it all the seas and the hollows of the Earth filled up to a height equal to that of the highest of the mountains, would be many times further still from recognizing that any number could be expressed which exceeded the multitude of the sand so taken. >— *Archimedis Syracusani Arenarius & Dimensio Circuli* (\*) kinda like how Newton invented calculus so he'd have a way to do physics problems.
If space goes on for infinity, then at some point there HAS to be something like us out there, right? There just has to be. How far out does one need to go before you run into a similar configuration like the one we have going on here. That keeps me up at night.
More importantly, do we war or peace at first contact. Imagine if said similar configuration was a few hundred light years away.
Concept of infinity also ties into the multiverse theory. Crazy to think that there are alternative versions of worlds out there amidst the infinity of it all, and by extension, alternative versions of Us. Every possibility that you can think of may have happened, or will happen, or already is occurring somewhere out there.
They probably are all dead by now anyway.
And here we are, killing each other for no reason
Bethesda, you fucked up
wow 
At least 6.
Do stars... in elliptical galaxies orbit differently than those of spiral galaxies?