Thoughts of existence and space

Mcsiegs,

Beautiful thoughts, actually - embrace them. That's the interesting part about this - all humans, or all I have met and truly asked and felt as though I got a true answer - have wondered these same things. Our anxieties and defense mechanisms are so bumped up, however, that something that makes the world all the more real - like these questions - defeats the purpose of our minds counter-attack on our stress/anxiety (namely, it trying to avoid reality).

Your questions are prying into reality, and your mind is trying to run from reality. I don't know as though it gets much more simple than that (perhaps it does, and I'm an idiot).

1. The Earth is just a ball floating out in the middle of nowhere - how did we get here?

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One of the greatest and most fundamental questions a person can ask. You're thinking like a child - that's good.

2. Even though we are standing on the ground, we are literally just on a floating mass in space?

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A mass rotating at an amazing 1700 km/hr, hurtling around the sun at 30 km per second, flying throughout our galaxy (known as the milky way - possible of barred spiral shape) at 250 km/sec. You don't feel any of it due to the constant nature of it all; remember F = ma, and so long as you're maintaing a constant rate, you're not accelerating. The gravitational attraction between you and the earth is strong enough to prevent you from flying off.

3. The concept of space infinity, and being so small in comparison - like the sun is millions of miles away. It's almost incomprehensible.

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I have seen, through a large optical telescope, an object known as a quasar - or quasi-stellar-object. They can be billions of light years away ( one light year is six trillion miles - the distant like travels in one year - and its moving fast, about 186,282 miles per second).

4. Did you ever think that we are part of someone's dream?

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Yes, ours. Which isn't far fetched if you think about it.

Two nice quotes:

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
Albert Einstein

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The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
Albert Einstein

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You can't be that dense.

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Ask anyone on this board - I'm completely dense; I never get anything.

The moon is IN space, it is outside of our planet and therefore is in space!!! HELLO?!

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Actually, not to be nit-picking, but the earth makes up space too - so is in, within, surrounded by, and comprises space. I think it's a popular misconception that space begins where our atomosphere ends, but really that denies the physical laws of symmetry. Space is just that - space - which exists here too.

Also, and I'm sure you might find this interesting - there really is no dark side of the moon. The rate by which the moon rotates on its axis is that same rate by which it rotates around the earth; the result of which is the same side of the moon facing earth. Clearly, if you note waxing and waning modes of the moon - you'll note that parts are illuminated that weren't so before - and then there is the whole solar eclipse phenomena which, obviously, illuminates the part we don't see. In fact, during the day (lunar day, not terrestrial) the lit parts of the moon can reach an astonishing 120 degress Celsius, while the dark parts can drop to negative 170 degrees Celsius (almost instantaneously too - right at what they call the "terminator"). Interesting stuff....

Don't try to make me look like the idiot here, you will be messing with the wrong person!!!

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Let me explain. My statement of "Is anybody OUT THERE" is a reference to the Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd and wasn't meant as an attack (to be really picky, it was The Wall where that phrase came from, but I made the lose connection to the Dark Side of the Moon). It was meant as a joke. If you listen to the album, they put extra weight on the words "out" and "there" - and so I was emphasizing those words in the usual BBS style of LARGE LETTERS. I thought you were joking when you brought up the dark side of the moon and the existence of a large, spot-light ridden spacecraft planted there to take pictures of some object that is not known to any of us but placed there by someone in an effort conceal it from the masses. So I was playing around with that and hoping to make you laugh and carry on your hearty commentary. Ooops. Me dense - daaaarrrrr....

I'm not sure as though I appreciate the idle threat you made however - although I'm almost certain that (and I'll know this by how you respond), there'll be no finding common ground with you short of spending many hours bantering back and forth, needlessly kicking sand in each others' faces like school kids fighting over the large tire fortress (anybody remember those, those were FUN) all along missing the point of this board as a medium for people to make each other feel better.

I'll leave your attacks alone and head out the door to enjoy my Saturday evening. I hope you do the same. G'nite all.