OUT THERE

I was taught that the galaxy was probably dead. Apart from dear little Earth, everywhere else was dead, no life, no air, no water. We humans are supposedly something special, there is nobody out there, we are “the chosen few”.

The first problem with that viewpoint is that life on Earth is everywhere. We now know that there are lifeforms that can be frozen for centuries that reanimate once conditions become suitable again (tardigrades) – there are lifeforms at the bottom of the deep seas, microbes floating in the upper atmosphere, and maybe living forms we have not even defined living further out from there . . . . . .

but we are told, sadly, there is no life off Earth.

Of course, this also depends on your definition of “life” too – is DNA itself a form of life? It can be frozen at zero degrees, frozen in a meteoroid and sent across the galaxy to finally land on some distant planet where it might be defrosted and reanimate to create new life  (see Prof. Fred Hoyle's Panspermia theory). . . . . but the universe is dead, right?

Our astronomers define intelligent life currently as that which uses radio signals to communicate, even though it is almost useless at interplanetary distances, but since we don’t (officially) know of any other method and can’t hear anything (officially), we are confidently told that there is nobody out there.

Personally I regard that as making as much sense as mythical American Indians looking toward the horizon saying to each other “there is nobody across the sea because we can’t see any smoke signals” - the assumption that radio waves are the only possible method of space communication is just plain stupid. I am sure that if space travel is doable (and I think it is) then they would have something much, much faster than radio waves for communication. This delusion that there is nothing else is pseudoscientific conceit - the real conceit here is that our science is somehow capable of explaining everything adequately, yet a few minutes of careful analysis will show it is deeply flawed: gravity waves, anyone? How about a "unified theory of physics"? Need I say more? 

To extrapolate from our local experience, we would expect that the galaxy would be teeming with life: every planetary body capable would have its own ecosystem, many with intelligent life, most based on some sort of DNA/RNA code because that’s the system we see around us.

Of course, this is all assumption. There may be other systems that don't use DNA but something else.

Would they all be nice, friendly and benevolent beings? Not likely. Not if they are anything like

the lifeforms here on Earth: the lifeforms here consist of predators and prey, parasites and hosts, symbiotes and lots of cooperatives. Of course, that assumes that they are quite similar to us, or at least life here - but they are alien and so they might not even be neatly described by us . . . . . we could need whole new collections of words just to describe alien life.

All of this only applies to this specific level of reality, please note: there may well be other levels of reality that are not “organised” the same way but I don’t know about them. 

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The net has supplied a huge amount of "information" but the trouble is,  most of it is junk: in addition, there may be information that is true but we have been taught not to trust it, and how can we change our views without solid proof? 

I will chart in future posts my own observations and notes about various things I think worth looking at - but with careful reference to facts as I understand them, with quite a bit of skepticism thrown in where deserved.

 For the first episode, I will refer you to Tyler from Secureteam10 for a word about The Moon.

Yes, everything he says is correct as far as I know, and can be verified from other sources. 

Why make up stuff when reality is so out there already?