I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords

I enjoyed this article from the Globe & Mail, about the possibility of discovering some kind of life on other planets. It's an exciting concept that I think would force a lot of people re-think their view of life on earth, but also it's just, well, cool to think about.

I also found this interesting:

“I'm certainly pretty confident biologists will understand the origin of life on earth this century. I suspect in 20 years we will have much clearer ideas of how life began,” he said.
“And that is going to be very important to answering how likely it is to have started elsewhere and where to look.”
He added: “If we understood how life began on earth, that would give us a clue to how likely it was to originate elsewhere and what the optimum environments were.”

I like when different fields or specializations interact. For some reason, the idea of biologists on earth helping astronomers know where to look and what to look for really grabs me. Maybe it's just because I like when people cooperate.

Also, I like articles about astronomy because, and I can't emphasize this enough, the universe is huge. The position of the Milky Way in it, and our solar system within that, is non-spectacular, not central, kind of off to the side. We're neither here nor there - literally: as the galaxy is constantly moving as the universe expands. If I understand it correctly, we're basically going in one direction as part of some massive big explosion (or "bang" if you prefer), which means the idea of location and distance and motion, as we measure them on earth, are all just relative as we're not stationary in the same location in the universe. Crazy to think about.

But my basic point is that with a universe that's 14 billion years old, with hundreds of billions of stars that we know of, it's hard to imagine that there isn't life out there someplace. But considering the closest stars are about 200 light years away - ie, it takes light 200 years to reach us (which means if we were being watched from a planet near those stars, they'd be seeing not us, but Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson) - it's going to be pretty damn difficult to ever get in touch with anyone.

For a bigger version of the picture, look here.