Today we renewed our interest in Epistemology by having a wonderful and wide-ranging discussion on how to use Epistemology to attempt to answer some questions that we will likely never be able to answer.
This Ted Talk Video, Chris Anderson on 2 Big Questions That We Don't Know the Answers To Yet, is a unique way of establishing some perspective on our place in the universe. To gauge our size in the universe he points out that if we took all of the starts in the Milky Way Galaxy and turned each of the 400 Billion of them into a grain of sand, we would end up with a beach a meter deep and about the size of our classroom (Rm. 104). If we turned each star in the universe into a grain of sand and created the same model we would create a beach many millions of km square, a meter deep - not enough room on our planet to hold such a model (400 Billion grains of sand x 100 Billion galaxies, or thereabouts). So, the two big questions Chris asks are:
1. How Many Universes Are There? and
2. Why Have We Not Seen Evidence of Extraterrestrial Life?
To the first question he answers that we are in a time of new thinking in Physics, and that there are potentially trillions if not an infinite number of universes out there (multiverses).
To the second question he answers that maybe our technology is not sophisticated enough, that's an obvious one, but that there is another potential answer too.... that we might not be looking in the right places. Perhaps alien life is everywhere, including on Earth, but we just do not recognize it as life. Watch his video and decide for yourself.
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