(Your first clue is in the first sentence...I didn't write this one! The much more knowledgeable (and amusing) Antony Robinson kindly agreed to help out with this one so sit back and enjoy a new perspective on Pondering the Universe!)
I first became interested in space when I was a boy. Like many boys in the late 70's I was bombarded with stuff like Star Wars, Star Trek and countless cartoon tv depictions of what being a space chap entailed, and usually it was right up our collective street. Cool outfits, cool spaceships, fit women in tight Lycra outfits and even the occasional sexy alien chic for Kirk to nail in Star Trek as I remember. Freaky aliens to shoot cool looking lasers at, strange unknown worlds to explore, warp drive to get you anywhere you wanted faster than any scruffy nerfherder ever completed the kessel run. What's not to like?
Well here we are approximately thirty five years later, I'm not an astronaut. Once I realised that you had to have the maths brain of ten Carol Vordermans, the hand eye coordination of six Bruce Lees and the physical attributes of a single Chuck Norris, I kind of lost interest.
Like 99.99999% (guesstimate) of people I won't be going into space anytime soon. We have all seen depictions of future technology, of house robots, flying cars, personal jet packs and moon bases, so far all we've got is the iphone, shitty electric cars for the yoghurt knitters, and wifi, which in fifty years time we will discover gives everybody piles, getting into space is extremely difficult, hugely expensive and very dangerous, and then when you get there the environment is trying to kill you.
The only way a member of the public could currently get into space is by paying for it. The space tourism industry is officially open for business, and tickets are going for a mere $20 million for a one-week stay in space. Despite reluctance from NASA, Russia made American businessman Dennis Tito the world's first space tourist. Tito flew into space aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket that arrived at the International Space Station on April 30, 2001. The second space tourist, South African businessman Mark Shuttleworth, took off aboard the Russian Soyuz on April 25, 2002, also bound for the ISS. Greg Olsen, an American businessman, became tourist number three to the ISS on October 1, 2005.
These trips are the beginning of what could be a lucrative 21st century industry. There are already several space tourism companies planning to build suborbital vehicles and orbital cities within the next two decades. Obviously as more people pay to go onto space, more vehicles will be built, more flights scheduled, and eventually the price will get to a level that means space flight is possible for everyone. Maybe one day the moon will be the new benidorm? Doubt it'll be in my lifetime though. Maybe my grandchildren might be space tourists. But for now its a reserve of the elite, the super wealthy oligarchs and Bill Gates/Richard Branson types that can either afford the ticket or as in Branson's case afford to pay people to make you an orbiter so you can go up yourself, then charge other people to go. At Virgin Galactic, all seats to fly to space are $250,000 and there are 600 people already in the line ahead of you. A lot of money, even in dollars.
Now Let's get some space stats out shall we?
Planet earth has a radius of 6371 kilometres, and our moon has a radius of 1,737.1 km, while puny red planet mars has a radius of 3390 kilometres, Jupiter however has a radius of 69,911 kilometres making it over ten times bigger than the earth! It's rocky core has the mass of fifteen earth sized planets on its own!
Then there's the sun, The solar radius is approximately 695,500 kilometres (432,450 miles) or about 110 times the radius of the earth. It is fucking HUGE!
Unless you compare it to something bigger like, oh I don't know, VY Canis Majoris?
This red hypergiant star is by far the largest known. It has an estimated radius between 1800 and 2100 times the radius of our Sun. With this size it would reach nearly to the orbit of Saturn if you plonked it in the centre of our solar system. This particular star is located roughly 4,900 light-years from Earth in the constellation Canis Majoris. Again, it's 2100 times the radius of our sun, which is 110 times the size of our planet. So fucking huge then!
4900 light years away? Let's try to get our heads round that distance.
Light year = the distance it takes light to travel in a year.
Light travels at a constant, finite speed of 186,000 miles/sec. A traveler, moving at the speed of light, would circum-navigate the equator approximately 7.5 times in one second. By comparison, a traveler in a jet aircraft, moving at a ground speed of 500 mph, would cross the continental U.S. once in 4 hours.
So 4900 light years is.....
- 186,000(miles)x 60(seconds)= 11,160,000 miles per minute.
- 11,160,000 (miles)x 60(minutes) = 669,600,000 miles per hour.
- 669,600,000 (miles) x 24(hours) = 16,070,400,000 miles per day.
- 16,070,400,000 (miles) x 365(days) = 5,865,696,000,000 miles per year.
- 5,865,696,000,000 (miles) x 4900(years) = 2.87419104e+16 miles.
Now I stopped understanding these numbers at around the second sum, I don't even know what 2.87419104e+16 is. Start substituting numbers for letters and I'm out. Normal human brains aren't usually built to comprehend numbers this big, or distances that far. But for a real mind blower lets have a peek at the largest known structure in the Universe, the Huge-LQG (Large Quasar Group), a cluster of 73 quasars stretching over a distance of 4 billion light years.
That's right 4 billion x 5,865,696,000,000 years to cross it. Also, it WAS the largest known structure in the universe. Now astronomers say they've spotted something even bigger in data from gamma ray bursts, the final explosions of energy released by stars as they die and the universe's most energetic events. Astronomers have measured the distance to 283 of these bursts and mapped their position in the universe. This throws up a surprise. At a distance of ten billion light years, there are more gamma ray bursts than expected if they were evenly distributed throughout the universe. This implies the existence of a structure at this distance that is about ten billion light years across and so dwarfs the Huge-LQG. So once again, fucking huge!
With all that space and all the stars and planets knocking about surely we can't be the only life?
Mathematically speaking, numbers indicate that we are unlikely to be alone. For decades we have been looking for life or signs of life in the universe. NASA launched Voyager 2 on August 20, 1977, from Cape Canaveral, Florida aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket. On September 5, Voyager 1 launched, also from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket. The Voyager spacecraft will be the third and fourth human spacecraft to fly beyond all the planets in our solar system. Pioneers 10 and 11 preceded Voyager in outstripping the gravitational attraction of the Sun but on February 17, 1998, Voyager 1 passed Pioneer 10 to become the most distant human-made object in space. In 2013 Voyager 1 may have passed into interstellar space, real unknown territory.
Both Voyager spacecrafts carry a greeting to any form of life, should that be encountered. The message is carried by a phonograph record - -a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages. So we've given any aliens that don't know we exist an poke if you like.
The amount of radio and digital noise we as a planet transmit will make earth light up like a beacon, we would surely be visible to aliens passing by, I don't know, to go to the space co-op to buy some anti gravity fags and put the universe lotto on.
So why do we not even know if they exist?
A: because they don't. We as a planet are all freaks of nature. Formed out of total chance.
B: because they don't. God did it all. REPENT!!!!
C: they have been watching us for years, and to be honest they like the place, but the people are nobs. Unpredictable and prone to over reaction. Best left alone.
D: Aliens have struck deals with various countries to allow harvesting of humans and/or cows, and 'visit visas' in return for alien technology. Where do you think the iphone came from?
E: they're coming and they want our water.
I could go on. There are countless theories regarding beings from another world, it's a subject which has captured human imagination. Movies, tv and music all have been influenced by the thought of aliens coming to our world, but regardless of the type of media used, there seems to be an almost formulaic approach to how a meeting of aliens and humans might pan out.
Firstly they arrive, obviously causing a bit of a stir being all alien and that. Secondly there will be some confusion about their motives for coming all the way from wherever. Are they friendly? If they are, do they mean it? Thirdly comes the alien attack which, despite obvious hints comes as a big surprise to most of the population, who then die. And finally there comes a turning point where humans reclaim their planet and send the naughty aliens to alien heaven. If you look at it on a larger scale, the scenario is painfully similar to Europeans landing in America. We arrive, we use the natives to help get settled, then kill them while reproducing like rabbits and force the remaining locals out.
It's not good news for us.
However, some scientists have debated that an alien society capable of travelling to earth would be so advanced compared to humans that they have no need for war, that their vastly superior intelligence has concluded that war is a pointless exercise. I doubt it. And with constant internet rumours of disclosure maybe one day we will find out. Maybe we won't.
One thing is for sure, as a species we have gone from living in caves and eating what we can catch to living in centrally heated houses and eating chinese takeaway, from drawing pictures on walls to having complete libraries of books in our pocket, on a device which also holds the same amount of music as three big cardboard boxes 15 years ago, from looking up at the stars to living on a space station orbiting the earth. We've done pretty good so far, but the best is still to come, and I for one welcome our alien overlords.....
Which pretty much meant ignoring the currently almost constant pain in my neck and hip and the incessant hunger pangs brought on by the steroids I'm currently on and focusing instead on walking to and from work every day (and refusing any kindly offered lifts) and dancing to the just dance game on the Wii (with very little evidence of either co-ordination or rhythm) for 30 minutes each night before knocking myself out with my painkillers and going bed early because I can't eat if I'm asleep - I'm not entirely sure what sort of temple I'm trying to achieve here but I really don't think any of these 10 most beautiful temples in the world have anything to fear ;-)
