ULTIMA THULE. Vass iss dat? Does your mind boggle easily? Ever hear of it?

It looks kinda like a snowman shape-wise. Two clumps of "stuff" that bonded together in the long ago. There is so much about this achievement that is beyond belief. I mean there is so much debris out there. All those years of travel and not a scratch? Not one encounter with anything? Sometimes some of the folks working on it would sleep on the floor in the lab so they could oversee it during some of the trickier phases of the journey. When it was about time to see if it had been a success an auditorium was filled with all the people who worked on it and their families. And when the first photos came in of what it looked like people were cheering and clapping and hugging. As if something very momentous and priceless had been accomplished...which indeed it was. 13 years on one project before you know if it is a success! That takes something I don't have...PATIENCE. You know Durdle I want to ask "what is the biggest number there is"? Silly question? But is there an answer to that question or do we just not know? If Ultima Thule is 4 billion miles away from earth and still in our galaxy what is the size of all the galaxies? How big would that number be?  It really doesn't matter because how does one grasp anything that big? Thank you for your thoughtful and informative reply. I appreciate it. The world is filled with wondrous things isn't it? Not the least of which is the dedication of these professionals. Happy Saturday!  :)

That is a lovely story. Well for sure hands down no question if I had the brains I would surely be a quantum physicist. I am drawn bigly to all it entails and have many books all of which I've read on the subject. My favorite literary genre as a child was fairy tales. I read them all..even the ones translated from the Russian and the Chinese and the Japanese et al. My favorite literary genre as an adult is of course is science fiction. And   attendant thereto is my absolute all-abiding fascination with quantum physics. I mean quantum entanglement alone boggles my brain. The positing about wormholes and black holes and event horizons and time travel is endless and fascinating. I remember once long ago as a young adult I went on a date with a guy who took me up to the mountains just so I could see the stars unobstructed by anything in the environment. No smog or smaze or smoke or fog. Just brilliant night sky. It absolutely took my breath away. We city livers miss so much when we look up at the stars. Anyway I can totally relate to the lady who broke down in tears when she saw the Milky Way. Some beauty is too much to contain and we need a release like that. What else is out there for us to discover? Oh I Googled Googolplex Durdle and the representation of that is mind-boggling. Row after row after row after row of zeros! I was stunned. Ever do that? Good grief how do you pronounce whatever number that is? A Googol is big enough but a GOOGOLPLEX? Sheesh! So whether one is a quantum physicist or astrophysicist how very lucky are they? They get to invest their entire working lives in searching for answers to very big questions. The more they find the more they have to question so it is never-ending. Thank you for your very thoughtful and informative reply m'dear and Happy Sunday! :) This post was edited by RosieG at January 6, 2019 3:26 AM MST

I wonder how much the human brain is able to comprehend? Layer after layer is peeled off as we try to get to the core, the heart, the truth. Science is possibly the only field in which searching for what is TRUE is a never-ending quest. That is its prime value in my opinion. Searching for the truth. We see bits and pieces here and there and try to reconcile disparaties. Scientists never give up. No matter how long it takes. Sometimes they work for years without results and sometimes lightening strikes and something wondrous is revealed. I think perhaps it is endless ... the quest. What is out there in the vast ELSEWHERE? Billions or trillions of galaxies. That alone is a mind-boggler. As I am insatiably curious I think being a quantum physicist or an astrophysicist would have really floated my boat and rung my chimes. Maybe next time around I'll be blessed with the brains it takes? One can hope. Thank you for your thoughtful reply Durdle and Happy Tuesday! :)

That's a good question, the capacity of the hu8man brain. I suppose it must be finite, but I have no idea why we all have very individual abilities and limits.

I don't think most scientists, including physicists, have exceptional brains. There are some who stand out even among their peers, but most simply have the gift of being able to understand difficult concepts, and especially to learn maths to a very high level. Most physics, whether quantum, "ordinary life" or astronomical, is mathematical.

And when they go home after work? They might well watch a sports event on the TV, or listen to a great concerto, and envy those performers for their abilities!

I worked for a company that made specialist equipment whose designs were very much applied maths and physics. My own level was very modest though! One day, one of the scientists asked if he could borrow my computer rather than traipsing all the way back to his own office, to look up a learned paper relevant to the project he was working on. When I returned to it, I found it still displaying a paper he'd discovered by chance, while searching for the actual reference. It was a few pages of Algebra so advanced it had symbols I had never seen before. It was in English, but by two Russian mathematicians, and I think offering an alternative way to solve some equation named after someone with a French name. I have no idea what it was about, what it was for, nor even what the unfamiliar operators did - I cannot comprehend even how such mathematicians discover these things! 

Wow Durdle that gives me goosebumps! You encountered math symbols which you'd never seen before? Like discovering a new species. How exciting that must have been for you even though you did not comprehend it. I mean your computer was touched by genius in a manner of speaking. There is so much we don't know. I wish we knew how much we don't know because that might cut some of the more egotistical among us with enormous  pomposity down to size. The pitiful little irrelevant inconsequential human beings who believe the world revolves around THEM and THEY are so awesome. Hah! Spect of dust. A grain of sand. A nothing in the scheme of things on a macroscopic scale. How important are we I wonder? Who does the evaluating? I'm gonna ask. Thank you for your very thoughtful reply Durdle and a very Happy Wednesday to you m'dear!  :)

The ones with real knowledge, or who accept their own limits, are not self-important, because either their achievements or their humility speak for them.

I can't say I was excited by seeing that algebra. It aroused my curiosity to a point, but otherwise only highlighted my inability to learn maths beyond a very simple level, and that with gaps ion my knowledge and understanding. 

Late evening here, now. I went to a public lecture explaining the geology and oil exploration of my part of the world. I live only about 30 miles from a small oil-field.

It was in a town about 10 miles away, and I used the buses - two each way. This meant I could enjoy a leisurely couple of pints of beer afterwards, in one of my favourite pubs, but it was lucky I discovered there, by chance, that the bus route back has been temporarily diverted by road works! The service late at night is hourly.

So I gave myself plenty of time to walk to the alternative stop, only to spot a sign there saying use another one, in an adjacent street, tonight only! I had time to walk that bit further, then a few minutes later saw my bus heading for the usual one. I shouted "Liar" into the night, and ran - on one arthritic knee and another recovering from a replacement - back just in time to catch it. I think the driver saw me struggling to reach it, so waited for me. He said no-one had told him of that diversion!

Typical m'dear! The question is are they all naturally inept incompetent or is it purposeful? In any case we the people ALWAYS get the short end of the stick and that can't possibly be by accident. It is by design. I'm sorry about your arthritic knee. Both Jim and I have arthritis which comes and goes. I think eventually if you live long enough you're gonna get it. Years ago when I was a little girl I lived across the street from another little girl about my age who was already wheelchair bound. She had rheumatoid arthritis...the crippling kind. At that young age! I still remember her and wonder what happened to her?. Hopefully your arthritic knee is not rheumatoid. I think you are very brave to go out at night by public transportation. You don't know who is out there just waiting to attack. They come out at night you know. Many of them are cowards by day and need the cover of night to act at all. Was the lecture worth your time and inconvenience? Living within 10 miles of an oil field does not sound healthy to me. Have you ever been adversely affected health-wise by your proximity to it? How far away are you from any nuclear facility? We're within 50 miles of San Onofre and if there is a meltdown we would probably be somewhat affected by that. The world is a very dangerous place. Proceed with caution! Thank you for your reply Durdle! I think I'm gonna ask that question. This post was edited by RosieG at January 10, 2019 5:02 AM MST

Thank-you for understanding my affliction, Rosie!.

I live in a very safe area: I have no qualms about using buses to go to a lecture on a Winter evening in a town  some ten miles away. Nor did I think it inconvenient. I could have used my car but I have a "senior citizen's" bus-pass so it may take a lot longer but is free. Besides, I could go for a pint or two of beer afterwards, since I was not driving.

 I might be a bit nervous about being in the town-centre late at night, so I would be careful, but really, the chances of anyone attacking me are not so large that I can't have the occasional evening out.

As for the oil-field... why does it sound unhealthy to you?

I'm actually nearer 20 than 10 miles from the oil-field but it would not worry me if I lived next to the well-heads' boundary fence. It is a very small field, compared to anything Arabian or Texan; it is production-only, with oil raised by pumping and gas by its own pressure. It is not a refinery; and it is built and operated under very stringent environmental and health-&-safety laws. The main hazard would be a major leak, the outcome potentially serious environmentally especially as it is in a sensitive landscape - but the risk is very low. 

Nuclear? The nearest nuclear power-station to me is about 70 or 80 miles away, but again I would not worry too much. Britain once led the world in research into safe, efficient nuclear power-generation, and one of the main laboratories was about 15 miles from me. It ran a joint UK - French programme in developing new reactors, and one was brought to the stage of powering a small generating-station feeding the National Grid. After the French government pulled out, our own governments just let all this work and lead slide, and what's left is now being dismantled and cleaned up.  My last employer's premises were among various companies that moved onto the laboratory site, once the nuclear-energy plant had gone. Again, the whole thing is under such stringent regulation and past collective experience, that the chances of a disaster are very small. To be honest, the hazards and their risks of my driving that 70 or 80 miles are far greater than those to me from the power-station.  

If you had to pick ONE THING that is most likely to annhilate humankind what would it be? Some kind of natural tragedy or self-inflicted? There are so many possibilities. collision with an enormous "something" in space could demolish us. Maniacal leaders could blow us up! Starvation or drought or another BLACK PLAGUE could take us out. An ICE AGE? I saw a Twilight  Zone long ago where in the sun kept getting closer and closer to the earth. People were dying from the heat. There was no escape.  In the end everyone and everything alive died.  Could that really happen? You sound very brave m'dear. I hope your excursions are always safe and worth the effort. Thank you for your thoughtful answer Durdle and Happy Monday!  :)

Rosie, you do worry about the least likely events as well as the feasible ones!

Humanity's greatest enemy is itself, with population increase as one major factor. Starvation and epidemics, possibly, with the latter more likely for us in the so-called "West".

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Another Ice Age? We are probably still in one, but this has two implications.

An Ice Age is not a single cold snap (albeit perhaps 100 000 years long so a "snap" only geologically). It is a series of warm / cold oscillations, with consequent ice-cover / sea-level rises.

We are still emerging from the last one, which is considered to have ended 10 000 to 12 000 years ago, but the climate will still warm for perhaps few thousand years more.  Whether our activities are affecting NOT the change but the RATE of change, is another matter, and I now learn that proper study of the last 100 years' weather statistics show no significant changes in overall weather patterns and less than 200mm of sea-level rise over the past 100 years.

So the implications:

Continuing but temporary climatic warming in a warm phase; with rising sea-levels as terrestrial ice melts. At natural rates this would take place over hundreds or thousands of years, before a reversal than perhaps 50 millennia on, back to a cold phase. So don't dig out your life-insurance policy: you and I won't be around. And that time scale should give Mankind time to adjust.

End of the Ice Age: then that would be really serious although again a slow process in human-history terms. For the Erath's climate is actually cooler than its geologically long-term average, consequently with its sea-level much lower than it can be. Although the Noah's Ark myth and the film "Waterworld" are equally fatuous, as the planet does not hold that much water, the eventual complete end of the present Ice Age will flood enormous areas of land by the sea rising many tens of metres above present. 

Si I would not worry about it too much. I don't, and I live in  coastal town, because the likely rate of sea-level change is probably not low enough even to affect my great- nephews & nieces, but low enough for future generations to adapt.

First though, the human race will have to realise it cannot keep expanding indefinitely, and even if our activities prove to have less effect on climate change than "everyone" fears, it cannot keep wasting the Earth's natural resources.

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The Sun approaching the Earth. It can't. The planet would approach the star. I don't know what "Twilight Zone" is, but I guess it's a science-fiction drama; and if it claimed an approaching Sun, it was talking rubbish from the start.

Orbits are what keep planets from simply falling onto their stars, so for the Earth to approach the Sun, it would have to lose its rotational speed. There is nothing to impede the planet's orbit, so in fact though it might slow very very gradually, it will quite likely outlast the Sun's death. Since that is estimated as being a long time away yet (I think from memory, estimated to be 4000 000 000 years away), I would not worry. 

What will probably happen though is that the Sun will behave like other stars of its class, with its outer layers expanding greatly. possibly extending a shell of cooler but still incandescent gas beyond the Earth. Life on Earth would obviously all cease, and the planet would become a very hot desert.

Humanity as we know ourselves would have no doubt ended far in advance of that, if only by evolution. Assuming it had not killed itself off first, or been wiped out by external natural forces, the natural span of a mammal species generally appears to be 2-3 million years even if its higher taxonomical divisions last much longer. That is a tiny fraction of geological and astronomical time.  

{The Ammonites, a large variety of Jurassic sea-animals similar to the Nautilus, were real evolutionary greyhounds, changing and developing species so rapidly that their distinctive fossils are used to correlate their holding strata to quite fine limits.}

So don't stock up Factor-100 sun-cream. It wouldn't help you anyway.

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Astronomical collision. That is regarded as a real hazard, but one of very low risk. The Earth has been hit by one or two very large meteorites in historical times but their worst effects were fairly local.

It has been thought for a long time that an asteroid collision brought the climate-change (cooling) that did for the poor dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, but many professional geologists now think this alone would not have been enough. Instead it suddenly compounded the far greater effects of long-term, intense volcanism that had been pumping enough gas and dust into the atmosphere for long enough to bring changes most of the reptiles could not withstand.

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So don't worry about Nature working in its own ways over centuries and millennia. Worry about Humanity, bringing its own wars, resources-depletion, starvation, social breakdown, etc.; within centuries or even decades. 

Once again thank you for taking the time to educate me about possibilities and probabilities and absurd impossibles. Superbugs may take us out because they are evolving faster than we can find containment for them. Might that be our undoing? Discounting a madman like trump would bugs be what we are unable to protect ourselves against? Every year the type/nature of the flu changes and our formulas to fight them change and we are always behind that curve. You go to a hospital for a fairly safe operation and die due to some bug. There are flesh-eating bugs. Where did they come from? You can't stop them. You just have to cut off where they are . It's a scary world out there both at the microscopic level and the macroscopic level. You're right. I do get carried away worrying about this and that and the the other. However it is mitigated by more forays into space and the universe and it reminds me how very insignificant we are against the scale of what exists. We give ourselves honors and rewards and awards and seek fame and fortune and status and power to what end? On this teeny tiny little piece of debris in space which is itself insignificant? How can we be significant except in our own minds? One wonders about such things often.  Happy Monday m'dear. Of course many things that were impossible before are possible now. Fantasy begins in a scifi story and often manifests itself in real life eventually. What man can conceive man can achieve t'is said. So what lies ahead we cannot possibly imagine!  :) This post was edited by RosieG at January 21, 2019 5:00 AM MST

I have long held the very uncomfortable thought that epidemics, or "plagues" as they were called in times long gone by, are a sort of rather ruthless population control. Obviously you'd have to be very callous to welcome them, but I think you are right that they are one of the main threats against us.

I think the last really big one was during World War One, a severe type of influenza. It became called "Spanish Flu" because being a neutral country, Spain was free to report on its progress there far more than the warring countries could risk for their own populations. I forget the death-toll around the world, but it was many millions. A factor in its spread was the movement of so many troops from many different countries, around the world for the War's purposes.

Why do we like honours and awards? It's nothing to do with our place in Space, but with our recognition of each other as people.

Indeed: we cannot possibly imagine what humanity will achieve, or life will be like, by the end of this Century, let alone beyond that. We are though, still bounded by the laws of science - or more accurately the laws revealed by science, by which the Universe works.

Is here on this earth all you think about tom? What about INFINITE WORLDS and INFINITE BEINGS OF INFINITE INTELLECT?  Among the trillions or billion of galaxies beyond the out there with which we are familiar there surely must exist other beings. It does not make sense that this one tiny insignificant planet is the only game in town as it were so to speak. I think we are definitely the lowest form because as you can see we can't even get along with one another though it would be in our best interests to do so. After millions of years or hundreds of thousands we still can't seem to get the hang of it. I say that shows our limitations better than anything else. I think GOD would not stop at failure.  Any GOD worth HIS salt would keep trying until what HE produced were the very best. We are not all there is. At least if we are what a waste of potential possibilities it has been. How many years should it take to be best? I dunno. But we clearly do not have "the right stuff" because if we did we would be that by now. But we aren't so there ya have it!  I guess I'm thinking in far broader terms. It reminds me of that Song "IS THAT ALL THERE IS?". Thank you for your reply tom and Happy Thursday!  :) This post was edited by RosieG at January 19, 2019 2:47 PM MST

"Among the trillions or billion of galaxies beyond the out there with which we are familiar there surely must exist other beings. It does not make sense that this one tiny insignificant planet is the only game in town as it were so to speak."

Whether it makes sense or not is immaterial.  To me, it makes sense that a God exists; an atheist lacks a belief in gods.  Discussions between atheists and believers can be quite cordial and interesting---I've had a number of them.  But obviously what seems to make the most "sense" to each of us has no bearing on whether or not a god or gods actually exist.

What exists MUST eventually make sense---the mind must conform to what exists because that is what IS "truth."

Lewis, in Perelandra, not only presumes the existence of other, "higher" (and "lower") order intellectual beings, he is conversant with them in character.

In the same way that St Thomas Aquinas suggests that angels are to be created with "divine abandon," I personally would expect that there are many other "types" of beings.  If God exists---as I think He does---He seems to really like "diversity" in the order of existence.

As for your comment, "Any GOD worth HIS salt would keep trying until what HE produced were the very best," the thought crosses my mind that our existence on earth is simply the forge with which we shape ourselves for eternity.

"Whether it makes sense or not is immaterial". Your words tom. "What exists eventually must make sense". Your words as well. Now you may not find that confusing but I do. If what makes sense  or doesn't is "immaterial" then how can you possibly contend that "what exists eventually must make sense"? Inquiring minds find conflicting statements confusing. Could you deconfuse, unconfuse me please and thank you. Happy Monday to you.

I can try---the capacity to learn for us beings who possess our beings in parts is limited.  Total understanding in this life of all (which includes the supernatural) of reality is philosophically impossible in this mode of existence.