November 15, 2005 11:21 AM
I'd like to share with you some thoughts on how lucky we are. I've been reading this book by Ray Kurzweil about the future of computers and how we will eventually transcend our biological bodies in favour of mechanical ones with a much longer life span. Ray has made predictions about where computing will be every ten years from 1999. Now, a lot of people make the mistake of basing the progress of the next 50 years directly on the last 50 years. This is a flawed school of though, because technology is expanding exponentially. So what some people are expecting of the next 50 years will quite possibly happen in the next 5 - 10 years. We're alive in an exciting time kids. Ray is predicting that around 10 years from now, computers will have reached the same processing power as the human brain ... and that's massive. We're not talking super computers either. The computer that Ray refers to is what will be the equivalent of a $1000 computer today.
Now Ray has obviously done a lot of research into the past and the universe and the posibility of life on other planets. Because of the size of the universe, (which I like to try and comprehend some times ... not sure why, it just makes me feel special) the posibility of life existing is pretty high. In his book Ray uses the phrase "Matter is both rare and plentiful". An example he uses of this is if you picked a random spot in space and looked for matter, chances are, you wouldn't find any, yet the earth and our solar system is full of matter. This alone is an interesting indication of how big our ever expanding universe is.
So, with these things in mind, imagine that there were another solar system identical to our own on the other side of the universe. Identical in every way so that the conditions for human kind evolving were possible. Now, I present you with the fact that Dinosaurs are going to evolve before people as it happened on this planet. What are the chances of an asteroid crashing into that planet and wiping them out? Little to none. Which means that Humans on this second planet are not going to be at the top of the food chain, the dionosaurs are. Sure they might eventually die out over time, or they could evolve further and become even more dangerous than the ones that were wiped out here. The biggest law of nature is natural selection, only the strong survive. I'm pretty sure that most early homosapiens would have been killed by these super dinosaurs.
So if you ever think that you're unlucky, think about what life would be like had the earth not collided with an asteroid all those years ago.
Oh, and just to put your mind at rest regarding all those other worlds out there with intelligent life. I wouldn't worry about it. By the time they are advanced enough for interstellar travel, they will have left their biological bodies also and there fore will not come here in search of resources. Everything will be self replenishing. The only reason to explore other worlds would be to make contact. There's also the posibility that we are the first planet to have evolved itelligent life. Now I know this pretty much contradicts what I said about the universe being infinate and all that, but the chances are pretty much the same either way I think. We've measured the time since the big bang (not sure how accurate this is, I need to read into it more) and if it's taken us this long to evolve to the stage we're at now, depending on how quickly the universe expanded back then, I think it's a fair call to say that other worlds may not have had the time to evolve yet. Of course this also depends on our position relative to the location of the big bang.
Tune in next week for my thoughts on time travel.