I prefer Pink to green.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

... To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

 

-- Carl Sagan

... in case that wasn't clear. Powerful stuff.

Also, anyone....ANYONE that truly understand how vast our solar system, galaxy, and FREKIN UNIVERSE really is....and thinks we're alone...is just a total dumbass in my book.  

 

And I'll go on record saying that, and i'll eat your fucking face off.  

I would love to believe we're not alone. I have been into astronomy since I was a kid, was hugely interested in SETI for a long while. But. Turns out there are good reasons for believing we are likely alone, or effectively alone. One is Fermi's "where are they?" paradox. Basically, once a civilization becomes starfaring, it should only take a few million years to colonize their entire galaxy. But the galaxy is billions of years old. So where are they? If there are intelligent aliens out there in our galaxy... then either interstellar travel is infeasible (in which case we're effectively alone), or we happen to be about the most advanced at this point. But what are the odds that other intelligent species would happen to arise just in the same tiny few-million-year window of our galaxy's existence as us?

More fundamentally, the anthropic principle suggests that our existence gives us no indication whatsoever of how hard it is for intelligent life to arise in the universe. If it's so fantastically improbable that it would only happen about once in our observable universe, bam, we're it. 

So...

 Yes, but it is So Vast that they are millions of light years away from us.  If they are there at all, they just don't care about us.....sob.

Yeah, maybe that.

I would love to believe we're not alone. I have been into astronomy since I was a kid, was hugely interested in SETI for a long while. But. Turns out there are good reasons for believing we are likely alone, or effectively alone. One is Fermi's "where are they?" paradox. Basically, once a civilization becomes starfaring, it should only take a few million years to colonize their entire galaxy. But the galaxy is billions of years old. So where are they? If there are intelligent aliens out there in our galaxy... then either interstellar travel is infeasible (in which case we're effectively alone), or we happen to be about the most advanced at this point. But what are the odds that other intelligent species would happen to arise just in the same tiny few-million-year window of our galaxy's existence as us?

 

More fundamentally, the anthropic principle suggests that our existence gives us no indication whatsoever of how hard it is for intelligent life to arise in the universe. If it's so fantastically improbable that it would only happen about once in our observable universe, bam, we're it. 

 

So...

That's exactly the kind of blather I'd expect from an alien who was walking among us who doesn't want to blow his cover.

And to quote Men In Black, "not a very convincing disguise".

whoa...is this the new 4:20 thread?

yes...maybe.....or its a manifestation of swamp gas......

It wasn't Lank... They chose me!