Infinite universe

Robert Wright brings me back to my college days--that four-year stretch of time during which I studied physics and astronomy and from which I emerged with less of a feeling of understanding than I had when I began:

This week the mystery deepened: Why no space aliens?

On Tuesday, scientists reported finding the most “Earthlike” planet ever, Gliese 581c. Its sun is cooler than ours, but also closer, so Gliese is in that climatic comfort zone conducive to water — hence to life, hence to evolution, hence to intelligent beings with advanced technology. Yet they never phone.

The first three things you learn these days when you study astrophysics--specifically cosmology--are that the universe is infinite, its topography is flat, and its reaches are accelerating in their expansion. At least that's the consensus now. A couple years into the major, you learn the empirical rationales for the second and third parts of that consensus. The first part emerges from theory, but there's very little we can "see" that in and of itself demonstrates the universe's infinitude. But if it's true, then it raises what some would call bong-smoke-philosophical issues and what I would call really interesting questions.

If the universe is truly infinite, and if infinity means what I think it means, then, even if it all exits outside of Earth's causal universe (i.e. our "future light cone"), doesn't the fact that organic life exists here mean that it has to exist elsewhere? Speaking statistically, Earthlings are proof that there is a non-zero probablility that the universe can produce recipes for life on planets. But even if that probablility is extremely low, the fact that the sampling size is infinite implies that, not only does life exist elsewhere, but infinite amounts of it exist elsewhere, doesn't it?

Take it further: This would mean that there are infinite identical copies of our very own existence happening in various somewheres out there. In a place far far away from earth (and in infinite such far far away places), a thing we would call a man in a place that looks a lot like Buenos Aires, Argentina is sitting in something resembling cafe writing in a language identical to English about frivolous matters "he" isn't smart enough to understand. I'd like to meet this "man." Actually, I'd like to meet all of these "men." I bet they are handsome.

Comments

[Ezra]

This is a good post. Why does nobody comment on your blog to say things like, "this is a good post," or they're not so handsome as you think?

[JimPortlandOR]

You neglected to mention that the universe has no center, so we can't be the center of attention.

Handsomeness is relative. I'm sure a planet (and its sun) in a galaxy that puts the black hole (which all good galaxies are supposed to have) closer than ours is within the milky way, would have some strange gravitational distorions that would look strange to our eyes. Sort of like a guy in a centrifuge-like thing.

And he would not likely be singing 'don't cry for me, Argentina'.