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Let's Marvel At The Great Unknown

Started by Artemis, April 05, 2008, 05:02:30 PM

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Artemis

There are plenty of places here where you can argue it out about religion, science, politics, and so on. I want to make a thread for the wonderer's and dreamers. For those who stare out of the window at the stars instead of into their encyclopaedias at night; a place for imagination and creative expression as opposed to dogma or dry scepticism. Here's a thread where we can appreciate the beauty of the big unknown, the great concepts that frankly blow my mind and consume far too much of my waking day... our mortality, the apparent futility of our existence existing in parallel with it's unbridled beauty and magnificence, our place in the giant cosmos, and so on.

This thread is best considered and contributed while listening to Njósnavélin by Sigur Rós.

I have a very religious past, left the dogma behind me, and did a philosophy degree. So I've spent a lot of time thinking about the 'biggies' - the questions which I honestly don't think we'll ever have a hope of truly understanding and can only marvel at the enormity and extent of the question and appreciate that we exist with a consciousness capable of appreciating questions of such magnitude. I positively dread the day my parents will die, and knowing that day will come chills me to the soul, because yes, I will miss them terribly, but I will be unable to run from these questions surrounding why we exist, then die, and in a hundred years will be forgotten. It's just so... beautiful, and tragic. And when given enough though, compels me to consider every facet of my life and demand more of myself then settling for the existentially pitiful life that Western culture puts before us, and many consider their only option...

... isn't it mind-blowingly awesome that we can consider to such a deep degree? Isn't it so awful that our culture permits so few opportunities to do so? Isn't this what we ought to be doing? Not in an academic way but by making bonfires, creating music and bonding with each other in ways that connect our souls, bring us together and allow us to just be in AWE of it all....

[youtube=425,350]http://youtube.com/watch?v=vGyq7d62oPQ[/youtube]

Emma Raducanu

I would like to explore the idea of shared consciousness but I'm too thick. There's a web site somewhere on the internet where people, according to themselves meet up in their dreams and explore their dream worlds together. Sceptical as I am, I doubt it's possible but wouldn't it be nice. Shared dreaming - imagine the possibilities!?

George Oscar Bluth II

Life on other planets for me. The odds suggest that there probably is life on other planets (either that or earth is really, really special) but if there is we'll probably never, ever know.

Duuuuuuude.

pk1yen

I've been thinking like this a lot recently; what it boils down to, is the meaning of life, Fate, and all that cal.

The problem with things like this, is while thinking about it, you make yourself feel so unique and special, and that you're the only person to feel like this, ever, and that these insights must be special and unique ... and then you realise that they're not, and you're not, and no matter how hard you try, you're either going to be trapped in the monotony, like everybody else, or you're going to piss people off by trying to get something more out of the monotony, like everybody else.

Any meaning to life, is one that we give it. Which is depressing, in that there is no whole truth, but I suppose, it's also liberating ... life can mean literally whatever we want it to mean, because that meaning doesn't exist outside our minds, and is therefore true to the only universe we know, which is the one existing in our own heads and nowhere else.

I'm quite often confronted with the utter, ridiculous possibility of life, the sheer number of people you'll never see or meet, and the way that these people affect your lives, one way or another, and therefore, the way you affect other people through every single one of your actions.

I think I still agree with Bill Hicks on this, for the time-being, at least. The only real meaning to life, is to create, and share.
Humans are designed to make moments last. And the only way we can do that physically, is by creating, and sharing.

Another problem with this, is that it's very hard not to sound like a pretentious student. Blasted finite language.

pk1yen

Quote from: George Oscar Bluth II on April 05, 2008, 05:35:03 PM
Life on other planets for me. The odds suggest that there probably is life on other planets (either that or earth is really, really special) but if there is we'll probably never, ever know.

The probability of life on other planets, and the fact we have no evidence of life on other planets, is a huge issue with this whole thing, for me. Thinking about it, there has to be a reason behind the apparently discrepancy. Maybe life never gets to an inter-stellar stage of existence because all intelligent life is fated to destroy itself? Either that, or perhaps inter-stellar travel and communication is physically impossible?

Or, maybe, one other option, perhaps that in the very act of life being formed, it means that no other life can be formed anywhere else in the universe?
Perhaps in order for life to be created, it requires the infinite probabilities and the mess of chance that existed in the quantum universe before life was created? I'm paraphrasing psuedo-science that I don't quite understand, here, of course. But perhaps that a universe without life, contained such infinite quantum possibilities, because there was no 'observer effect' (Schrödinger's pussycat-box and all that nonsense), that life had to be created, by complete chance; the structure of DNA had to be formed, in a less-developed way, and so reproductive life had to be created. And when it was, evolution took its inevitable course, for a short period, until the creature/plant/thing was developed enough so that it created the 'observer effect', imploding the infinite quantum universe into the cemented one that we observe today. And by doing this, destroyed the infinite probabilities that are required to create new life.

So, new life cannot be formed until all life is extinct, and the universe is destroyed. Essentially.

Perhaps we really are alone. We'll probably never know.

George Oscar Bluth II

I like this picture, too. The pale blue dot, taken from (it says here) 6.4 billion km away from earth by Voyager 1. Everything that ever has been in our entire history is inside that tiny dot, it's incredible.



Yeah, there really is no way of talking about this stuff without sounding like a stoned student. Someone put on Dark Side of the Moon!

rjshade

Carl Sagan talking about the 'pale blue dot' photo:

[youtube=425,350]http://youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M[/youtube]

Rather good.

steven583699

I didn't realise there was a discrepancy between the size of the universe and the current lack of aliens we know about.

We haven't been around for long. Our technology is probably only a tiny percentage of what it could be, and we haven't looked very hard.

I'm as sure that there's other life out there as I am that there is no God or higher power. Whether it's intelligent is just a matter of degrees. We're still only animals after all, just ones with big brains.

OK now I'm starting to see how difficult it is to communicate these thoughts. Hopefully a bit came across though.

rjshade

Quote from: steven583699 on April 05, 2008, 08:50:16 PM
I didn't realise there was a discrepancy between the size of the universe and the current lack of aliens we know about.

The Wikipedia page on the Fermi paradox is a pretty good read. Given the age of the universe and the number of stars (over 250 000 000 000 in the milky way alone), the chances of multiple technologically advanced races not existing must be tiny. So the question is, why haven't we ever come across them or any evidence of them? Maybe the chances of a race surviving beyond a nuclear age is almost 0, maybe they have no interest in expanding outside of their home planet (can't start anthropomorphising arbitrary alien races), maybe the formation of life itself is much lower than we think. Just read the wikipedia page, it's seriously good:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox


Quote from: GOB3
And when it was, evolution took its inevitable course, for a short period, until the creature/plant/thing was developed enough so that it created the 'observer effect', imploding the infinite quantum universe into the cemented one that we observe today. And by doing this, destroyed the infinite probabilities that are required to create new life.

Have you read the book Quarantine by Greg Egan? Worth checking out. Whole premise of the book is based around a very similar idea.

Pinball

It's all too much for our limited monkey brains to understand, but as soon as amphokines become available, enabling neuronal networks to be formed that 'normal' brains can't achieve, maybe we'll start to evolve a bit quicker... before it's too l <kaboooomm>

Pylon Man

QuotePerhaps in order for life to be created, it requires the infinite probabilities and the mess of chance that existed in the quantum universe before life was created? I'm paraphrasing psuedo-science that I don't quite understand, here, of course. But perhaps that a universe without life, contained such infinite quantum possibilities, because there was no 'observer effect' (Schrödinger's pussycat-box and all that nonsense), that life had to be created, by complete chance; the structure of DNA had to be formed, in a less-developed way, and so reproductive life had to be created. And when it was, evolution took its inevitable course, for a short period, until the creature/plant/thing was developed enough so that it created the 'observer effect', imploding the infinite quantum universe into the cemented one that we observe today. And by doing this, destroyed the infinite probabilities that are required to create new life.

What? Life coming about means the laws of probability change? How the fuck would that work? There's nothing "special" about life, it's just a collection of molecules that responds to stimuli and can reproduce.

But speaking of interstellar travel and alien life and such, I'm EXTREMELY annoyed that we get to live for only 80 years or so. I want to live for thousands of years. All of this stuff isn't going to be resolved in the next 50 or so years.

jutl

Quote from: steven583699 on April 05, 2008, 08:50:16 PM
I didn't realise there was a discrepancy between the size of the universe and the current lack of aliens we know about.

There isn't really. As we don't really know what the conditions required for the development of intelligent life are, we can't estimate its likely rarity.

George Oscar Bluth II

Quote from: Pylon Man on April 05, 2008, 09:56:07 PM
But speaking of interstellar travel and alien life and such, I'm EXTREMELY annoyed that we get to live for only 80 years or so. I want to live for thousands of years. All of this stuff isn't going to be resolved in the next 50 or so years.

Yeah, things are slowing down aren't they? When you consider that it was 65 years between the Wright Brother's first powered flight (all 12 seconds of it) and Neil Armstrong landing on the moon it's something of a disappointment that we haven't progressed much in that area in the 40 years since, we're simply rehashing old ideas.

Garam

Depends which aspect of society you're looking at, really. For example, there're more crisps flavours than ever these days, and they're thinking of more all the time!! There's never been a better time to be alive for crisps-likers.






edit: theoretically speaking, based on the rate they're knocking out new flavours of crisps, do you think they might invent an entirely new flavour, only available in the crisps? WOAAAH

Baxter

The Fanatablulous Drake Equation

N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which we might hope to be able to communicate

N = R*fp*ne*f*fi*fc*L   

R is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy.
Not really that hard to dispute as we can derive this from astronomical amounts of astronomical data.

fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets.
Hard to tie down to a number but data is being gathered all the time.

ne is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets.
As the greater proportion of planets thus far discovered have been gas giants and unless you want to go for visions of gas dwelling manta rays they're pretty much discounted, the distance from the star is often cited as needing to be in the goldilocks zone but who can say if this is accurate across the board one simply needs to look at deep-sea sulphur vent dwelling microbes to see that life in some form can exist in much higher temperature ranges. A great deal of the stars in our galaxy pump out regular basts of ionizing X-rays that would prove pretty deadly to the formation of an entire ecosystem so most of them are also removed from the running, but you start to see how much of a guess assigning any number to this would be.

f is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point.

From picking a guestimate for the potentiality of life we now have to pluck a number out of the air again to define how many within the set ne will actually go on to develop life, Biogenesis is a hard enough subject to talk about with any real authority on our own world. Interestingly and somewhat against what some expect the presence of O2 would be detrimental to the formation of primordial life add to that my previous mention of deep-sea sulphur loving microbes that were discovered relatively recently and before that it was assumed that such an environment was toxic to all life we see again that it's just guessing.

fi is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life.
what factors lead to one species developing a self awareness such as our own? pick a number from 0.0 to 1.

fc is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.
What if human life had failed everywhere and was only confined to a relatively small population of hunter-gathers preying on the north American plains-bison? ok you imagining that? Ok now assign a probability to that occurring. good now that wasn't total guesswork was it?

L is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
We're talking about omni-directional Radio signals with sufficient strength to make it into the depths of space and reach a receiver with sufficient signal to noise ratio to be detected by our good selves, fighting the forces of attenuation and entropy all the way. this window in our own case is during the period in which we are using radio-waves to send information, not laser beams sending streams to the other side of soho for editing, not focused tight beam microwave pulses, not wired communication, not encrypted wireless traffic that barely reaches the other side of the house.

Either use the drake equation or you can just pick a number really.

pk1yen

Quote from: Pylon Man on April 05, 2008, 09:56:07 PM
What? Life coming about means the laws of probability change? How the fuck would that work? There's nothing "special" about life, it's just a collection of molecules that responds to stimuli and can reproduce.

In order for a DNA-type molecule, able of reproduction and mutation all that malarkey (pre-evolution ... it can't have evolved in the traditional sense because all evolution is solely based on DNA itself), to appear ... the probabilities of it actually being formed, from the pre-life goo, even over the billions of years pre-life, must be quite small. But if probabilities were infinite, then the probability is 100%.
It's also 100% for everything else happening though ... perhaps Sliders and Hugh Everett III were right.

I'm not declaring any knowledge about the (quantum) mechanics of it ... just a theory, that's all.

I meant to buy Quarantine ... but Waterstone's magic computer said it wasn't out yet, last time I checked. I'll get on it. Ta for the reminder.


As for Drake and his made-up numbers: http://xkcd.com/384/.

Pinball

Quote from: Pylon Man on April 05, 2008, 09:56:07 PM
But speaking of interstellar travel and alien life and such, I'm EXTREMELY annoyed that we get to live for only 80 years or so. I want to live for thousands of years. All of this stuff isn't going to be resolved in the next 50 or so years.
This is a very good point. An area I'm fascinated by (and have researched extensively) is longevity research, and I reckon in 10-20 years the rich people on the planet (i.e. us) will benefit from it. But I want it now, man! I mean there's little things you can do, like taking a statin and ezetimide to buy 10 years' more life (which I'm taking), but the 'caloric restriction proteins' could double our lifespan, then there's prevention of DNA damage (DNA damage is the cause of aging after all) by preventing telomere reduction etc., the anti-metabolic/insulin-esque approaches and all that. Where are they??

Will we see a generational divide in lifespan of 50-100 years? I reckon so, and we're in the wrong generation.. An interesting scenario that BTW. A good topic for a scifi book, if I had the fucking time to write it which I don't.

pk1yen

Quote from: Pinball on April 05, 2008, 11:35:07 PM
An area I'm fascinated by (and have researched extensively) is longevity research, and I reckon in 10-20 years the rich people on the planet (i.e. us) will benefit from it.

Can we afford to let this happen, as a race, until we solve the overpopulation problem? With extended lifespans, we'd literally fuck ourselves into oblivion.

Personally, I'd be all for a one or two child policy, in exchange for extended lifespans, thereby very slowly fixing the overpopulation we already have, as well as the massive increase through extended longevity.

There'd be no way to sustain an even more ageing population, there would have to be restrictions in place ... but it does sound rather Orwellian.

Pinball

Well yes, control of the world's breeding chambers is vital, but that's hardly a new problem. And frankly, stopping 'em gestating will be difficult. Regardless, I would like, personally, to live a bit longer, yeah? Don't benchmark low fertility rate Europe against 8 kiddies per family breeding areas, please... We are not over-popultated/-ing, certainly not -ing. That's why we 'need immigrants' (apparently). Because we're aging and don't have enough children. So either we have more children or live longer (in a healthy go-to-work state). It isn't rocket science.

steve98

Am I right that in the book "Contact" (not the film) the Jodie Foster character finds proof of God in the decimal points of pi?
If so I don't quite understand, cos the JF character and Carl Sagan were both atheists.

Baxter

I always thought that was a joke because any string of digits you can think of will appear somewhere in Pi somewhere along all those unpredictable digits there it is.

http://www.angio.net/pi/piquery

Can one truly talk about Qualia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary%27s_room

steve98

Quote from: Baxter on April 06, 2008, 02:21:09 AM
I always thought that was a joke because any string of digits you can think of will appear somewhere in Pi somewhere along all those unpredictable digits there it is.

http://www.angio.net/pi/piquery

Can one truly talk about Qualia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary%27s_room

According to that link you posted the chance of finding a pre-specified 11 digit number is about one in a thousand when pi's calculated to 200,000,000 decimal points. The Jodie Foster character (following hints by the aliens that she visited) spends years calculating pi to billions of decimal places and finds no patterns until it starts generating thousands of 1's and 0's, when she stacks the second thousand 1's and 0's under the first thousand and the third thousand under the second thousand,  etc, the square pattern shows a perfect circle of 1's embedded in a sea of 0's. So pi is defined by a circle, but is also hidden deeply in the decimal expansion of pi.
I think we're meant to see this as the "signature" of God. (turning up just when we need him).
The film doesn't show any of this for some reason.

Sony Walkman Prophecies

#22
Quote from: pk1yen on April 05, 2008, 05:39:25 PM
The problem with things like this, is while thinking about it, you make yourself feel so unique and special, and that you're the only person to feel like this, ever, and that these insights must be special and unique ... and then you realise that they're not, and you're not, and no matter how hard you try, you're either going to be trapped in the monotony, like everybody else, or you're going to piss people off by trying to get something more out of the monotony, like everybody else.
Totally, that's where im coming from too.
From birth its really just a series of seemingly never-ending regulations until your ultimate death when you think about it.
You start off as a pure solipsist of course - centre of the universe with no reason to suspect otherwise.
Then you have that first day at nursery/school where you suddenly realise that the world is awash with other little egos just like yours all competing for attention - ego goes momentarily limp, experiencing its first proper taste of performance anxiety.

Then you mature into adolescence where you finally learn that alot of the skills you assumed were unique to you are infact possessed by other people as well. Oh, and that alot of these individuals have a far greater mastery of these skills to boot - ego starts to wonder how the fuck it's going to get out of this one.

Then you have your first experience of being dumped (another hammer in the coffin for your sense of self) no point labouring under the pretension of leading the life of a premier pimp-lover anymore, it only takes one rejection to shatter that dream (self-delusion non-permitting).
Then, just when you think youve finally found that inner sanctum where you can accept your flaws as 'quirks' and your deficiencies as 'struggles', your hair starts falling out. (You might want to have a quarter life crisis at this point)
Now youre frantically placing all your bets on rhat single race, stuffing all your eggs into the nearest basket.
You might not have the potential to be brilliant but, if you can get it together and concentrate all your efforts on something doable - being a solid businessman, a caring father, a loving boyfriend. Then maybe, just maybe, even though you know you'll never be the 'best' at any of these things  - it might just be enough for you to keep on going.

Sure you'll have your moments of self-doubt, quiet moments of  reflection where you question your place in it all.
But if you can manage to focus on the small positives, the faxes from headoffice - "really good work Steve!" and those sympathetic compliments from your lover "well the point is that you tried and thats all that counts" (pat on the back) you might just find enough strength to carry on.
After this point of course youre probably going to have kids (fuck it, whats left?) and then, when they eventually grow up into fully formed adults youre going to faced with another awful truth - your siblings are smarter than you.
Hastily constructed excuses will have to be thought up as you try to wriggle your way of yet another Christmas monopoly game with your kids that you know in your heart you cant win.

Of course there's every probability that your kids might not be cleverer than you, or charming, or handsome. They might just turn out to be the kinds of people you never particularly notice; amiable but instantly forgettable.
Or worse still, they might simply turn out to be the kind of fuckups that are so pathetic you cant even bring yourself to pity them.
Either way its just another piece of evidence to add to the already mounting case against you - that youre sub-par, in possession of dodgy, third-rate genetic material.

All that's left now is to become even more decrepit and deficient than you already are and to spend the rest of your life shitting your pants and crying for someone to come and change you.
Only this time round you havent got the benefit of believing yourself to be the centre of the universe anymore - youre just a tiny speck on God's spectacle, in the direct line of fire of his twitchy finger which is about to flick you off into the dark abyss any day now.
If he ever gets round to it of course; everyone is busy you know, even God has a life yeah?

Final note: If youve not already drowned your lungs in car exhaust fumes You can of course apply the same process to the human race itself, the relegations are abit different of course but its the same process more or less.
Start at square no.1 - centre of the universe, wait for Bruno to land on square two and show that not only is the earth not the centre of the universe, there cant realistically be said to be a 'centre' to the universe atall (philosophers might want to get out their beards and start ruminating at this point).
Then you get to square 3 and say "oh well at least, you know...created in God's image and that"
Then on square 4 Darwin turns up unannounced with a Shit-Ton of research he's kept hidden in his greenhouse over the past decade, proving once and for all that we are infact only a random process of adaptation and mutation (sorry).
By square 5 nagging doubt has transformed into creeping anxiety and the human race starts to wonder what the fuck the point of it all is anymore.
At square 6 some French 'postmodernists' march in looking quite earnest and ashen faced with the news that almost everything is a construct - Created either to secure or to cement the power of those in already in charge. Worse still, knowledge itself (i.e. everything we've ever worked for) seems to be utterally self-referential and culturally relative.
Not only they say, should we forget about all that 'meaning' we gave up on in the previous century, we should probably start looking towards dismantling our quest for 'truth' as well.
By square 7 youre like 'wtf dude' and just hoping (not praying that would be pointless now) that there's enough xbox and pc games in existence to hold back the floodgates of nihilism for a while.
You discover there is. But theyre all shit so decide to play snakes on your retro brick nokia instead while half-watching the news downstairs.
While in the middle of a pursuing a particularly irksome pixel around the screen you overhear on a BBC ad break that Bianca Jackson is making a return to 'the square' and that the already damning cringe-fest that is Doctor Who is employing Catherine 'am-i-bovered-thou 'Tate as the Dr's new sidekick.
Humanity makes a collective face which manages to communicate both defeat, despair and amusement all in one expression, skips to the last square and necks all the remaining Valium.

pk1yen

The only response to that is a quiet, resigned sigh. An impressed one, but still completely and utterly resigned.

Nihilism for me, then, I suppose.

Ignorance is bliss? Discuss. Do you think it's better to be happy and stupid, or intelligent, informed, and miserable?
It's easy to say happy and stupid, but I'm not sure ... truth, thought and logical conclusions are much more valuable then faith, I think. I don't see how anyone can have faith in anything without a nagging doubt peeping round the corner at the back of their skulls. And I don't see how that doubt doesn't grow and grow until it includes everything - if only for a few seconds, before normal apathy resumes.

And another question: If there was a pill that would make you truly happy, until you die, would you take it? A couple of my friends said yes, of course, but a couple said no. I couldn't get any decent arguments out of either camp.
Would it detract from the beautiful gamut of human emotion? It would surely stifle creativity, art, production, and we'd all die out. But we'd be happy. And so, at least until the dolphins evolved and created industry, would the world.

chand

Quote from: rjshade on April 05, 2008, 08:42:27 PM
Carl Sagan talking about the 'pale blue dot' photo:

[youtube=425,350]http://youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M[/youtube]

Rather good.


That's a great clip, you gotta love Sagan (the DVD of his Cosmos series was supposed to be coming out here last month but it never materialised; I bought Mrs Chand the R1 anyway so I'll finally get to watch it in its entirety soon). Always confused me that people see how tiny the world is and take it as a signfier of the 'futility of our existence'; as if somehow we only mean something if our achievements dominate the entirety of time and space. I'm with Sagan; seeing the relative size of the Earth in space reveals the majesty of the universe and all the unknowns, but it should remind us that this is the only planet we've got for the foreseeable future. It means there are exciting possibilities out there in other parts of the universe, but it doesn't denigrate the importance to us of all the incredible things that have happened, are happening, and will happen here. The fact that we're tiny beings, existing as a blip in the great chronology of things, clinging to a tiny rock which represents an unimaginably small portion of the universe only makes it more important that we try and do something worthwhile with our time here.

Always makes me angry when the religious kind of snootily look down on we non-believers and assume that as atheists or agnostics we consider humanity worthless, and that only an afterlife offers any kind of hope. For me, the assumption that when I die I'm just gonna be bones in the dust is what drives me to find other ways to make an impact while I'm here, rather than spending my life praying to a God that might never have existed in the hope of booking a place in an afterlife that might suck. I can't think of any more compelling reason to try and enrich humanity through art, through music, through politics, through whatever means you can, than the idea that doing something that makes a difference is the only way we can really 'live on'.

Pylon Man

QuoteBut I want it now, man! I mean there's little things you can do, like taking a statin and ezetimide to buy 10 years' more life (which I'm taking)

Really? More info? What does that stuff you're taking do exactly then? Slow the ageing process?

Sherringford Hovis

Quote from: chand
The fact that we're tiny beings, existing as a blip in the great chronology of things, clinging to a tiny rock which represents an unimaginably small portion of the universe only makes it more important that we try and do something worthwhile with our time here.

Indeed. Charlie Stross' The High Frontier really brought me back to Earth with a bump last year. Up until then I guess too many spliffs while watching Star Trek made me think that space travel was humanity's panacea.

boxofslice


Benevolent Despot

#28
Quote from: George Oscar Bluth II on April 05, 2008, 10:27:26 PM
Yeah, things are slowing down aren't they? When you consider that it was 65 years between the Wright Brother's first powered flight (all 12 seconds of it) and Neil Armstrong landing on the moon it's something of a disappointment that we haven't progressed much in that area in the 40 years since, we're simply rehashing old ideas.

I think the lack of progress in spaceflight and space research is largely funding-based, during the Apollo years NASA's funding accounted for 5% of the US federal budget, nowadays it's about 0.5% - that's a huge drop, although understandable really. I mean it was literally a space race back in the 50s and 60s, and as soon as they'd landed a man on the moon it was pretty much game over for the soviets, and spending on space exploration and research just tailed off in both countries.

Here's a pretty good article on it: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/898/1 - which contains a pretty startling fact that can quite easily be used to counter the "But we should solve Earth's problems first before we venture into outer space" crowd's agitating opinions - in 2007, for every $1 spent on NASA, $98 were spent on social programs in the US, so by those figures, if social programs' budgets were cut by just 1%, NASA's budget would be doubled, instantaneously. Space travel gets the tiniest of tiny slices of the US budget, and I'd imagine the same is true in other countries.

I'm not advocating screwing the poor over in favour of more space exploration, but it puts things in perspective.

And I think in the next 5 to 10 years we're really going to see an exponential rise in the number of extrasolar planets found, and hopefully a few more earth-like ones, rather than the preponderance of dull, hot gas giants we've got at the moment.

Pylon Man

The small rocky Earth-like planets are much harder to find due to their very small mass and size compared to the gas giants. Doesn't mean they're not there in the solar systems with the gas giants or that they're any less common.