OT: The size of earth..........

[i seen hippos]

wouldn't affect me.

religion is just a means to live a goodly life....nothing more.

believing in god is all that matter really.

[VCDrivesAPorscheToWork]

Valid point. OK, I understand that the MASS that was created during the Big-Bang is still expanding infinitely in all directions, but it's not like once you pass the perimiter of said mass, there's just going to be a brick wall or something. There's just going to be more space infinitely in all directions. Something else fun to consider is that once you're past the perimiter of the mass of our 'universe'(this word is a bit misleading) which was created during the Big-Bang, maybe a googolplex of light years away(most likely MUCH farther away, however), there could be other mass infinitely hurtling through space created by a very similar 'Bang,' much longer ago than ours. Or much more recently. And in infinite space, there could be an infinite number of mass, created by an infinite number of 'Bangs'. The possibilities are endless.

what is a googolplex again? i forgot the algorithms but some engineers fondly speak of it as some immensely large number using some kind of exponential addition.

[VCDrivesAPorscheToWork]

wouldn't affect me.

religion is just a means to live a goodly life....nothing more.

believing in god is all that matter really.

i seen hippos, what is your stance on intelligent design?

[i seen hippos]

i don't believe in it.

god created earth and left it. god made everything scientifically explainable so things would make sense to us.

we'll be judged once we die and that's the only time god will stick his nose into our business.

on a half serious note, i think this is just a test cause there's really a war going on in the heavens (with maybe more gods) and the most devoted of us will be given higher ranks while the lesser of us will be foot soldiers or something. lol

this theory also means dudes like osama bin laden will be ranked very high, cause while we don't agree with what he does, he's very devoted to his cause "in the name of god"....don't even know if he's that religious actually.

[VCDrivesAPorscheToWork]

i don't believe in it.

god created earth and left it. god made everything scientifically explainable so things would make sense to us.

we'll be judged once we die and that's the only time god will stick his nose into our business.

on a half serious note, i think this is just a test cause there's really a war going on in the heavens (with maybe more gods) and the most devoted of us will be given higher ranks while the lesser of us will be foot soldiers or something. lol

this theory also means dudes like osama bin laden will be ranked very high, cause while we don't agree with what he does, he's very devoted to his cause "in the name of god"....don't even know if he's that religious actually.

isn't that essentially a simple interpretation of intelligent design?

[yeahwhathesaid]

you can still be a christian and believe that aliens exist, at least if you believe that aliens are like animals and cannot go to heaven and hell, and believe that god created humans first then aliens

[VCDrivesAPorscheToWork]

what if the other life forms are sentient crystals?

[i seen hippos]

yea, but i'm under the impression that intelligent design states that the world was created 2000 or so years ago, which i don't believe.

i also don't believe the stupid science people who think cause you can explain things with science, god didn't create us or the universe. as if god wasn't smart enough to incoporate science into our universe.

[i seen hippos]

What if the aliens are more intelligent than we are? Will they still be considered to be like animals?

what if they don't hold any concept like religion or god though?

[Real Men Wear Green]

When you see just how small earth is in this universe it really makes people who think Earth has the only life look stupid

No it doesn't. I'm unsure myself but have neither heard nor seen any proof that planet size determines whether or not a planet is more or less capable of sustaining life. There is an unknown number of planets, stars, and galaxies out there so it may have happenned but the size of earth isn't proof.

[VCDrivesAPorscheToWork]

what if other life forms do not exist in the same spectral plane as we do? what if htey exist in the fifth dimension and we can only glimpse them when at different EM wavelengths for short periods of times?


there is obviousl a biochemical/physical rationale behidn their existence, but they will appear merely as "ghosts" to us. will there be religious stigma attached to them?

[Real Men Wear Green]

How do you think followers (or leaders) of the world's major religions would react if we discovered extraterrestrial life? Imagine the theological scramble to explain THAT one.

For that matter, how do you think your average person would react?

The Hindu religion teaches that there is actually an infinite number of planets with various life forms on them. The Christian Bible simply doesn't address the subject, so it would neither prove nor disprove anything if the only thing discovered is, say, some purple amoebas.

you can still be a christian and believe that aliens exist, at least if you believe that aliens are like animals and cannot go to heaven and hell, and believe that god created humans first then aliens

None of that is necessary. The Bible doesn't discuss aliens at all.

[VCDrivesAPorscheToWork]

[VCDrivesAPorscheToWork]

Is that from The Simpsons?

yeah in an episode a few years ago Kursty the Clown made Itchy and Scratchy promos by making

Confederate Itchy

Scratchbob ITchpants

and Osama Bin Scratchy

[Heilige]

First of all, I'm a firm believer that there is life in the universe beyond what we know, if for no other reasons than the odds simply being stacked against us being alone in such a huge ass universe. Seriously, as you can see from those comparisons, our planet is but a grain of sand on a beach. Maybe even smaller.

So what I was thinking is this...

Since there are other planets out there that are soooooo much bigger than Earth, what if the creatures that live on those planets are bigger too? I assume creatures on Earth are a certain size due mainly to the size of the planet (don't want it too crowded or we'd use up all the resources) and because of the gravitational pull we have here which makes it impractical to be huge. So what if some other planets that don't have such a strong gravitational pull, or whatever different kinds of differences are involved, makes it possible for creatures to grow proportionate to the size of their planet. I mean, it's not as extreme an example, but if an ant is 10,000 times smaller than a human, what keeps a creature on some other distant planet from being 10,000 times larger than us? Maybe even more than that. I guess what I'm saying is that when people think of life on other planets, they probably imagine things that are roughly the size of what we have here on Earth, but why does that have to be the case?

According to those comparisons, if a creature somewhere else in the universe had what we would consider relative size to his own planet, his right nut could be the size of Earth. That is, if they have balls there.

Space is crazy and so am I.

Actually, it has more to due with the percentage of oxygen in our atmosphere...

Due to millions of years of vegetation domination on the earth's surface, there was an oxygen rich environment that allowed invertabrates to grow to enormous proportions. Vertebrates were dangerously close to losing the evolutionary war, but when oxygen supplies dwindled, our complex lung structures allowed us to thrive while the giant bugs suffocated...

I, too, am in the belief that there is other life out there. Like you said, statistically speaking, there has to be. I'm not so sure about your question of there being life that much bigger then us. Sure, whales are pretty big, but it's nothing like the size difference from an ant to a human.

I don't know if planet size would effect life size in the way you are thinking. I think it would be reasonable to say that life on larger planets would tend to be smaller due to the gravity, while, on smaller planets, lower gravity would allow for a larger size. That, however, would only be viable for life as we know it.

In any case, a planet can only be so small while retaining an atmosphere, which would most definatly be required for any type of life. It is also my understanding that a planet with a solid surface can only get so large. So there is only so much variation available, but once again, it's for life as we know it, which is life that resembles that which is on Earth. There could be, and probably is, all sorts of weird life out there that has completely different rules.

In case anyone is interested...

Mass of the Earth: 5,974,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg.
Mass of the Sun: 1,988,920,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg.

The universe is a big and amazing place.