On my way to the gym some days back i got thinking....
When i was a kid, i used to think (or maybe imagine) that maybe our world is not as big as we think it is. What if our world is just a part of the play set of some giant being, someone who has no idea we exist and who is playing with the earth like it is just a ball. or maybe a speck of gigantic (to us) dust.
This got me thinking about the movie "Horton hears a Who". This whole movie is based on the premise that a whole world can exist on a speck of dust without us knowing about it. That life has so many different shapes and sizes and forms. Even in the world we know, life exists in so many different forms. Then i got thinking, what is life?
i know it seems like a very heavy question, but i wasn't thinking about it spiritually or even philosophically. I was thinking rationally. What is life? The answer seems easy. Life is what is used to classify beings into living or non living. But what authority do WE have to classify something as living or non living? A being is a being isnt it? It exists. So what if it doesn't breathe? So what if we can't see its motion, or its reflexes?
Every single thing on earth is made up of molecules and atoms and sub-atomic particles and maybe even sub-sub-sub atomic particles that we don't know about. All these things come together to form just about the whole universe. These things have energy of their own; they have a pattern of their own. Electrons go around nuclei in fixed paths. Neutrons and protons stay together in the nucleus. There is something that keeps them there, and the electrons away. Yeah yeah... I know... gravitational forces, electrostatic forces etc.. So why are they not part of life? Sure, they're a part of living beings, but are they living beings? If no, why? Why dont we classify them as life? Beats me.
When we go searching for life on Mars, what exactly are we looking for? Something that exists on earth that we have already seen or heard about? Or are we looking for something new and different? How are we going to recognise this "something new" if it doesn't fit into our idea of life? Do we know what the parameters of life are? Maybe what constitutes life on earth is not even a beginning of what is alive in the universe.
When we say that the universe is made of the same basic particles, are we so stupid as to shun ideas that maybe these particles took on a new life (pun intended) in other environments. Mercury may be a hostile planet for us. Maybe it wasnt for some other beings. Does that make them any less alive? Hell no. The same can be said for any place in the universe can't it?
Maybe there is a whole civilisation out there that we don't know about becaust it doesn't conform to our idea of life and we haven't broadened our horizons enough. On the flip side, maybe the same can be said of them also, which is why there has been no contact yet. Or maybe there has and we have been to blind to see/feel/notice it. There isn't an absence of unexplained phenomena here on earth. Maybe someone was saying hello.
So are we going to say hello back? If yes, then how? I dont know. I was just musing on the way to the gym and knew that I had to put this down somewhere. Maybe you can tell me and we'll share the credits of that Nobel Prize. :-P
'Til next time, ciao!
3 comments:
What you were musing about is nothing but the multi-universe theory. Yes, there are such theories and there are scientists who have even been working on this. What work they have actually been doing, I do not know. But they are supposed to be doing something.
This same thought occurred to me while I was in school. I thought I would make a fool of myself and so did not talk about it all that much. When I was in the 11th grade, I shared my view with a few classmates. Many laughed at me(maybe the way I put it was funny in a weird way) but one guy told me exactly what I am telling you now in much the same way. He had
posted my comment half way through. I suck!
Continued...
He had had the same idea a few years earlier and his sister explained things about the multi-universe theory to him. So anyway, the weird thinkers like us are not very few. There are crazy scientists who think along those lines as well. :P
i wasnt talking about the multi universe or parallel universe theory here... i'm just saying that maybe we dont know about life elsewhere in this same universe because our definition is not broad enough....
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