Article overview:
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- The Vast Size of Space & The Universe
- Planets Near Earth that are Well Attributed to Support Life
- Video Explanations
- Extreme Conditions in which Life can Thrive
- Why have there been no public Alien Visits?
- UFO Sightings
The Vast Size of Space & The Universe
When you consider that there are billions of stars in our galaxy and billions of galaxies in the universe (let alone mentioning planets), it looks inevitable that there is life outside of our planet. On top of this, research has shown that life can thrive in seemingly inhabitable environments, not to mention that we only view a small spectrum of reality through our eyes (our brains only decode a small spectrum of waves).
The videos in this post discuss this with great insights including:
‘If our Solar System was the size of a coin, our galaxy would be the size of the USA.’
‘There at least 100 billion (100,000,000,000) stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone. Many astrologists believe there to be closer to the 400 billion mark. To put the size of this number in perspective, it would take 17 minutes to count to 1000, 12 days to count to a million and 32 years to count to 1 billion.’
‘Our solar system (The Milky Way) is about 100,000 light years wide. This equates to 621,371,192,237,333,890 miles (each comma in this number is broken down as follows; quantillions, trillions, billions, millions, thousands, hundreds).’
‘Light travels around 5.88 trillion miles in a year. This is called a lightyear.’
‘The total number of stars (like our sun, many of which are much bigger) is much more than all of the grains of sand on Earth, each with the potential to inhabit life on surrounding planets.’
‘Even the stars near to our solar system dwarf our sun. Betelgeuse (645 lightyears away) is 1000 times larger than our sun. Imagine the amount of planets a star that size could sustain.’
*Antares A (as Antares is a binary star system; a Solar System with 2 stars)
‘If you were to catch a plane to the sun from Earth, it would take 19 years, from Earth to Neptune, it would take 600 years and from Earth to the nearest star after our sun, it would take 5 million years.’
‘The Hubble Telescope has taken photos of a small section of observable space to reveal thousands upon thousands of galaxies, each with billions of stars and some that are believed to be formed over 12 billion years ago (shown below). In the observable Universe alone, there are 100s of billions of galaxies.’
Planets Near Earth that are Well Attributed to Support Life
‘Proxima B is a planet orbiting the nearest star to our Solar System (Proxima Centauri) and has a similar profile to Earth, as well as being around for a similar amount of time. This planet is closer to its sun, but Proxima Centauri is a smaller, dimmer star and as such, this provides a good foundation to support life.’
‘It orbits its sun like the moon orbits Earth, meaning that one side always faces its sun whilst the other is always in dark. This means that it could support much more varied life, as well as attributing a constant sunset at the parts of the planet that transition from light to dark. This is a small example of the abundance of different potential life and terrains that there are just in the Solar System next door.’
‘There’s even a good chance there is other life in our solar system. Jupiter’s moon Ganymede has a salty ocean with more water than Earth.’
Video Explanations
The first set of videos below include facts, size comparisons and virtual journeys through the observable universe.
Extreme Conditions in which Life can Thrive
From the size of the stars and solar systems much bigger than our, to the vast amount of galaxies out there, logically, space should inhabit an abundance of life. Especially when you consider that our solar system is a small speck on the grand scale of things. To add to the likelihood, research has shown the adaptability of life in different environments, so much so that there could be life closer to home. Check out the quote and videos below for more on this research.
‘Microbes such as tardigrades can survive up to 30 years with no food or water and can survive extreme temperatures (including deep beneath Antarctic ice), radiation exposure and the vacuum of space.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9GNCc_4f8A
Why have there been no public Alien Visits?
Avi Loeb (Professor of Science at Harvard University; view his profile here) believes that we should take a modest look into things; we are not the centre of the Universe and there is likely to be much more advanced life than us. He says one question that gets posed against more advanced life is ‘why have they not come to Earth?’.
He suggests that they might not visit us for reasons such as we are not that interesting (as it is likely we are a more common lifeform/intelligence) and that we need to evolve much more as a species, as we are quite destructive. Also, if we were visited, they could go undetected with their levels of technology. More can be viewed on Avi Loeb below:
UFO Sightings
Although UFO documentaries and videos have a bad stigma, the videos below draw on some interesting findings. This includes what appears as cover ups from NASA on noises heard from the dark side of the moon and the US military suggesting that a nuke was tested over a busy part of LA to try and dismiss UFO claims. In addition, US fighter pilot Commander David Fravor filmed and reported a UFO in 2004. This was only released to the public in 2017. In 2020, the US Navy stated that this is a UFO and mainstream media reported on this.
You can read more on the universe here.
