Hubble Deep Field

This is a deep space field image taken by the Hubble telescope. It has been called the most important image ever taken. The image is actually a compilation of exposures taken between December 18th and December 28th, 1995. The image contains approximately 3,000 galaxies. The image comes from the constellation Ursa Major. The field is SO small that only a couple of the stars from our own galaxy are visible in the foreground. To give you an idea, the area depicted is so small it is like a grain of sand compared to the size of the known Universe. In this field  there are hundreds of BILLIONS of stars, each with the possibility of having it's own solar system with planets like ours. Again, let me stress that this is an area of space that is comparable to a grain of sand in the big scheme of things. How can anybody be so arrogant as to believe that we are the only lifeforms in the Universe when taking into account the shear size of it? To me, it is undeniable. I don't need solid proof. I am a huge skeptic and I am not religious, but I have to admit that when it comes to this I have a lot of faith. I guess that I probably have the same sort of faith in the Universe being a place rich with life as a religious person has in God or Heaven. I only recently realized this and it is quite eye-opening. I will look down on someone that believes in something based on faith alone but I guess that I am not all that different. Then again, my own personal beliefs ARE supported by mathematics...hence the title of this blog. :)

Are we alone? Have we been visited by aliens or alien spacecraft?

I heard Dr. Seth  Shostak of SETI speak at the Science Center in my hometown a few years ago and I was fascinated by his presentation, particularly the part about the Drake Equation. It wasn't the actual equation that fascinated me...I am the farthest thing from a mathematician that you could imagine, it was what the equation revealed that fascinated me. It is almost a mathematical impossibility that we are alone in the universe. We need not be theoretical physicists to know that mathematics is the language of the universe, whether we personally can understand the complicated equations or not. This blog is not a blog about UFO sitings or Alien encounters, frankly I doubt that we have been visited by extraterrestrials. If there is any validity to UFO sightings, I believe what people are seeing are unmanned crafts. In 1977 NASA launched two unmanned space probes,Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Originally designated to study Jupiter and Saturn, the probes continued their missions into the outer solar system and in June of this year they left our solar system. NASA still has contact with both probes. The two  probes continue to operate, with some loss in subsystem redundancy, but retain the capability of returning scientific data. Both probes  have adequate electrical power to continue operating until around 2025, after which there may not be available electrical power to support science instrument operation. At that time, science data return and spacecraft operations will cease.  Both probes carry  a golden record that contains pictures and sounds of Earth, along with symbolic directions for playing the record and data detailing the location of Earth. The record is intended as a combination time-capsule and interstellar message to any civilization, alien or far-future human, that recovers either of the probes. The contents of this record were selected by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan. So one day this time-capsule of sorts could be discovered by a civilization elsewhere in our galaxy. If such civilizations exist and are at least as advanced technologically as we are, there could be similar unmanned probes out there waiting to be discovered. This could explain UFO's that have been sighted by NASA in space, as well as here on earth.