Possible life found 140 light years away

[Pass2Run]

The physics involved in this discussion is way above my understanding but I do have two thoughts about human beings.

I think we struggle to understand or accept the concept of infinity. Everything has to have some kind of boundary. We cannot bring the thought of infinity into our everyday thinking. We say the universe was not here forever. It started somehow, and it will collapse and end somehow. Why can't it just keep going on forever and ever? How can we speak for a universe so large we cannot observe most of it? Our understanding of the universe today is mostly theoretical.

Likewise we struggle with the opposite in the context of infinity. Why can't there be only one planet with intelligent life, and it is us? I get it. If the probability of intelligent life is 1 in a trillion and there are infinite planets, then for every trillion planets there should be 1 with intelligent life, and there are infinite trillions of planets so there are infinite planets with intelligent life. Right? But we are talking about probabilities and without knowing how many other planets are the home to intelligent life we are guessing at the probabilities. And probabilities are not certainties. They always leave room for the possibility of alternative outcomes. In an infinite number of universes (why assume there is only 1?), there has to be one with no intelligent life and some with only one planet with intelligent life, right? Maybe we are in the universe with only one planet with intelligent life? That is a possibility, isn't it?

And we have to consider that large parts of observable space are extremely hostile and unstable. Earth happens to be situated in one of the more stable parts of the galaxy. This has to factor into how we managed to survive long enough to become intelligent.

The last thing is, we do not know what we do not know. Do we know 50% of everything? 1%? My guess is we are closer to 1% than 50% by a lot. How much will our thinking change when we get to 2% or 10%.

In the beginning, there was no beginning....

 

[gtb1943]

In the beginning, there was no beginning....

the concept of always and forever are difficult for our species to grasp.

which is perfectly understandable for sentient species at our level of development