Nut case
Republican Christopher Smith of New Jersey has demanded to know, in an
amendment to a defense bill, if government agencies created lime disease as a
bio-weapon, and if the Department of Defense released lime disease ticks
outside of their laboratories in the U.S.
And it is
not just Republican politicians.
1.4 million
people have signed up via Facebook to storm Area 51 in Nevada, and get the
truth on alien space craft and little green men. The event’s motto is:
We wake
every morning into our mundane life worrying about finances, relationships and
Donald Trump. We move through this venn
diagram of intersection relationships and concerns with the idea that if a tree
falls in the forest and we don’t hear it – it doesn’t exist.
And then
there is a moment of awakening where we realize how small and insignificant we
actually are
Yesterday I
was listening to Maine Public Radio in our car and the discussion was on the
possibility of alien life in the universe. Noted astronomers, including Stephen Hawkins, made the case that the
chance there is not life scattered throughout the universe is so small as to be
discounted.
Our Milky Way galaxy is believed to contain upward
to one hundred billion stars, and with the discoveries of the Hubble and Kepler
telescopes we have found that most stars have orbiting planets, which brings the
estimate of planets in our Milky Way Galaxy into the trillions. It is also estimated that at least ten
billion of those planets are located in what astronomers call the ‘sweet spot.’ This is a location relative to its star
where the temperature and conditions could support life forms. Beyond our own galaxy there are hundreds of
billions of other galaxies containing trillions of stars and uncountable
planets, many with the possibility of supporting life.
The soon to be launched James Webb telescope will expand our knowledge ever farther - to the first light of the universe - and the possibility of defining actual life habitable planets
The idea
that only the earth, among the expanses of the cosmos, could develop life (and
what in our egocentric idea is intelligent life) verges on the ridiculous.
