Random Thoughts On Life And The Human Universe

* Life Defined: There are possibly as many one of a kind definitions of "what is lifestyles?" as there had been and are biologists, life scientists, naturalists and philosophers, and so on. Most centre on or round standards like growth, duplicate, response to stimuli, metabolism, violations of the second one regulation of thermodynamics (entropy), and related similar ilk. None had been absolutely nice in any other case we might have THE textbook definition. My take on "what is lifestyles?" is really one-of-a-kind. Life is a few sort of complicated natural structure that has a behaviour that isn't always simply predictable via classical (or even quantum) physics. Or, in different words, underneath the most tightly controlled and uniform set of laboratory situations, the 'shape' will do as it damn well pleases!

* Life: Speaking of life, there is no such factor as 'dwelling count number' vs. 'useless rely'. All rely is 'dead depend' on account that all matter, from the floor up, is composed of electrons, protons (quarks and gluons), neutrons (extra quarks and gluons), photons, neutrinos, and so forth. Few if any might ague that an electron, proton, neutron, etc. Is 'living count number'. And the atoms, hence molecules, even complex molecules they make up aren't alive. No depend is alive or is 'residing matter'. What is 'alive' is the employer, the general structure of numerous bits and portions of be counted, in relatively unique preparations, such that - and this is the key factor - entropy, at the least temporarily, is thwarted. Entropy eventually wins whilst the organisational structure breaks down, this is, life dies.

* Death: Death is not some thing to be terrified of. You experience death, however not demise when you consider that as soon as useless, you don't have any lifestyles and also you need to have an lifestyles, you have to be alive, so one can enjoy some thing, something, even death. So you by no means experience death, only that up to however not which include loss of life.

* Afterlife: It is apparent that the essence of what makes you, you - personality, knowledge, creativity, feelings, intellect, memories, etc. - may be and is altered by using bodily tactics starting from head injury to disorder to growing old to lack of sleep, meals chemistry, alcohol, pharmaceutical pills and other chemical substances inhaled, ingested or otherwise absorbed into the body. Therefore, the essence of what makes you, you is primarily based on bodily realities and therefore you're grounded in physics (and now not simply by means of gravity both). So except the domicile(s) of the afterlife supports physics and physical approaches, and that there is a physical mechanism which can transfer your bodily-based totally essence from your physical frame to an abode that supports a physical afterlife, then simply forget about approximately any existence after demise.

* Afterlife: You actually do not need to die, but you genuinely don't need an eternal afterlife either so be cautious approximately what you want for. I suggest you'll be bored to 'dying' after the first million years with billions and trillions of future years and that is simply the beginning! Sounds a bit extra like a hell to me! But when you consider that your afterlife should take location inside the Universe, somewhere, what occurs for your afterlife whilst the Universe in the end hits its warmness loss of life or collapses lower back on itself in a Big Brunch (the alternative of the Big Bang). Regardless, it's curtains on your afterlife. It's additionally clear that your body, whilst it dies, does not visit an afterlife. If you go to an afterlife, it is your mind, your consciousness, the essence of what makes you, you that has to make the adventure. But what form of afterlife might that be for a at some point vintage infant or for a a hundred and ten 12 months old with excessive dementia or for someone center aged who became an ex-boxer or ex-gridiron participant whose head and mind have been so pummelled as to now go away him only a fraction above a vegetative country. The identical would possibly apply to someone who have been starved of oxygen for a prolonged time, like a close to drowning sufferer. What if your afterlife were pretty plenty similar to your lifestyles with a nine-to-five task, a rotten boss, bearing a heavy email galore and unproductive and worthless meetings burden, masses of bills, taxes and a lawn to mow, plus those in-laws and horrible family. Add to that mix now a splendid deity it really is cracking the whip in any respect hours. Now assume back to pre-life. Wasn't it non violent and tranquil and tax unfastened? What if your post-demise had been the same as your pre-life, wouldn't that be 'heavenly', and as an added bonus, it is all anyone else's trouble now.

* Meaning, Purpose & Existence: An oft asked question is "What is my motive in life: why am I here?" People need a few type of that means and purpose to their existence and frequently appearance to religion to provide it. That's natural laziness. The Universe assigns you no which means. The Universe assigns you no purpose. The Universe doesn't care why you are right here. The Universe doesn't supply a rattling due to the fact the Universe can't provide a rattling in the specific identical way as a rock cannot deliver a damn about you and your quest. The cosmos would not faucet you at the shoulder or deliver down from on excessive Ten Commandments fashion and tell you why you are here and what your purpose and which means is. If you have got which means or motive in solution to why you're here it is because you your self have assigned yourself motive and meaning, albeit perhaps via the nurturing of others like dad and mom, teachers, your partner, and so forth.

* Plants: Humans call them weeds. Mother Nature calls them plant life. So-referred to as 'weeds' too have their vicinity in the herbal scheme of things. Stupid humans!

* Evolution: If species A gives rise to Species B, it's notably not going that during best ten million years Species B will anatomically appearance, and psychologically act, considerably extraordinary than Species A did. Evolution happens, however softly, softly, progressively, steadily. A species of cockroach isn't going to morph into a species of ant or spider or fly in ten million years. A stegosaurus is not going to morph into a parrot in ten million years. So the human species desires a whole lot of explanation in comparison to a chimpanzee or a commonplace chimpanzee-human ancestor. We look and act just a bit too far removed in the time to be had.

* Human Species: While it is true that some of the opposite primates can walk upright on two legs some of the time for brief intervals, most effective a bipedal human can climb up or down a staircase while balancing a tray in one hand even as thinking of something else, like sex and now not fall over. Only a bipedal human, relative to our primate cousins, can preserve balance even as dancing or gambling sports activities that require quick and speedy changes in direction. But a bipedal stance is sort of similar to balancing a straw on its end. It's very easy to cave in, go increase.

* Human Species: Despite the very famous but self-promotional idea, human beings are the least rational species in the world. Any different animal that acts irrationally, say thru a genetic illness or ailment or the equal of dementia, is a dead animal. I have yet to witness any animal performing in any way, form, way or form that wasn't rational for either its personal survival or the survival of its genes, its community or its type. I most really can not say the identical about the human species.

* Human Species: Humans and cycles cross hand in glove. Though maximum are artificial constructions and therefore as a substitute phoney, cycles are essential to human beings and human society. The Day-Night cycle is of the maximum high significance, and it's miles a natural cycle. Humans placed a lot of inventory in the seven day week cycle, that is an artificial assemble, and to a lesser quantity the month (also a phoney cycle even though ever so loosely based totally on the lunar cycle). The year is a herbal cycle (in phrases of the seasons) and likely of greatest significance subsequent to the day and week cycles. Decades and centuries rank pretty low in importance and are synthetic constructs in any event. The millennia are only important while the calendar adjustments over from say 1999 to 2000 (though the brand new millennia simply commenced in 2001) and 1000 yr cycles lie out of doors of the human lifespan in any occasion. And that have to be quite a great deal it - besides for a few ancient societies who had cycles of obvious significance so long that predated the very life of those societies (and concluded properly after those societies went extinct), like the Mayan long count (take into account that famous doomsday date of 21 December 2012). Other societies measure ongoing cycles of advent-destruction in such prolonged durations that they virtually haven't any drawing close effect at the societies propagating them. When societies have cycles of importance which might be of no immediate importance, you then have an anomaly and you've got got to surprise wherein subsequently gave that particular cyclic idea.

* Human Language: Modern humans are one species, many breeds, but one species. Our single species has however heaps of languages, each in use and extinct. That's an anomaly. Other animals, each a unmarried species, whether of now not they arrive in breeds like cats, puppies and horses, have one vocal language (supplemented, as inside the case of people too, by means of frame/facial 'language'). A Chinese cat can converse, that is making its intentions understood, with a French cat, or with an Egyptian cat or with an Australian cat. Why human beings by myself had to or have advanced a huge multitude of spoken languages is a piece of a mystery. Body/facial 'language' on the other hand is quite well-known, therefore singular.

* Human Organism: You probably consider yourself as one singular organism. The expression "me, myself and I" are all singular. Yet, you already know flawlessly well that you are definitely a colony of billions of organisms (cells) operating in more frequently as not the case in overall concord. Yet, as things turn out, you play host to billions and billions greater microbes. Nine out of ten of the microbes that make you up are not virtually a part of you in any respect, like say those bacteria that continue to exist and thrive to your mouth. So, are you an organism, a colony of organisms or an environment for organisms? I'm pretty astounded to learn that 90% of me is not me! So perhaps our real reason in life is to serve as hosts for the greater multitudes. The desires of the numerous [microbes] outweigh the wishes of the only [Human].

* Diet: We've all study and heard about how we consume way greater salt than is important and that an excessive amount of salt can reason excessive blood stress and coronary heart attacks and associated nasty conditions. What is never stated in these types of health warnings about salt is the comments mechanism that restores the proper stability. It's corresponding to what number of bars will positioned out unfastened salted peanuts or salted chips for the clients. It's not out of the pure kindness of the bartender. If you take in a whole lot of salt you get, wonder, thirsty. And so the bar makes up for the 'loose' peanuts and chips via selling extra liquids to quench the thirst you building up with the aid of ingesting all that 'free' salty stuff. In other words, if you over indulge in the salt, you will drink greater fluids due to the fact you get extra thirsty, and the additional liquids will, whilst filtered thru the kidneys, take the unnecessary salt with it (salty urine) and the right balance is restored. So, if we eat manner extra salt than is essential, we possibly drink way more fluids as nicely.

* Archaeology vs. Mythology: There are numerous depictions of historical rock carvings or petroglyphs and the like, of what appear like dinosaurs, like that widely known stegosaurus at Ankor Wat. Creationists use those snap shots as evidence to suggest, indeed nation categorically, that this proves dinosaurs and human beings coexisted. Sceptics have a area day rubbishing that notion, however nonetheless the ones pictures stay and stay to be explained. My turn!

Now in the international of all things mythological, one will locate depictions (carvings, art work, rock art, statues, etc.) of actually loads upon loads of imaginary beasties, regularly human-animal hybrids just like the mermaid and the centaur; animal-animal hybrids like dragons and griffins; and different just undeniable beasties just like the thunderbird or some that are just plain weird, like the ones winged bulls with human heads and five legs from the Near East. These mythological beasties are regularly depicted in regular settings cheek-through-jowl with your general ordinary definitely actual animals. You discover griffins along of deer, foxes, horses, farm animals, geese, even cats and puppies just as herbal as you please - just like that stegosaurus has really real cutting-edge partner animals also carved in comfort at Ankor Wat.

It might no longer be surprising, IMHO, that by way of risk, some of those mythological or imaginary beasties, inventions or constructs of the human mind, might just manifest to grow to be equivalent to real, but long extinct, life bureaucracy. So if we see a rock carving of what seems to resemble a stegosaurus, it is simply twist of fate.

* Archaeology: The Australian Aborigines: With recognize to the Australian Aborigines, to me the one Big Mystery by no means addressed at all became why no Aboriginal civilization? I suggest the Aborigines had the intelligence and the resources and clearly the time (50,000 years really worth) to construct things. But there aren't any equivalences to the American Indian mounds or pueblos; no pyramids or temples (like the Egyptian or Central American), nothing comparable to a Stonehenge or Newgrange or maybe some thing like an Easter Island statue or a splendid wall or a terracotta military and truely nothing approaching ancient Greek/Roman buildings. In truth, the Aborigines by no means even came up with some thing as simple as pottery. Why? It strikes me as a first-rate anomaly.

* Archaeology: The Wheel: When you observed of the most crucial and fundamental inventions that humans are credited with only a select few honestly stand out. Taming hearth is one. Cutting equipment like stone flakes are any other. Writing is a 3rd. Coming up with the idea of not anything or the 0 become a real step forward. And of path there is the wheel. However, there are some anomalies in relation to the wheel. In the historic Americas for instance, the wheel became each regarded, however unused. Translated, you locate inside the archaeological document kid's toys that have wheels. What you don't discover is that idea extrapolated into the grownup global. Adults, be they Incas, Aztecs, Amerindians, and so forth. Did tot employ the wheel even though wheeled toys abound. Now the basic purpose for that given is that they had no beasts of burden like oxen or horses to pull chariots, and so forth. So consequently no wheeled chariots. However, that does not give an explanation for the dearth of other realistic adult applications like the wheelbarrow, or small wheeled wagons/carts/structures or 'purchasing' trolleys or maybe a primitive rickshaw that would be pulled through one character. Not the entirety wheeled needs to be the dimensions of a chariot, a included wagon, a stagecoach. There's no longer even a potter's wheel and so on. The concept of round or rolling (as in logs) is obvious to the maximum basic of cultures, yet for the primary 1/2 in their very prolonged empire, that remarkable-civilization, at least for those instances, the historical Egyptians, failed to make use of the wheel. The Australian Aborigines didn't appear to have a wheel-eureka moment either.

* Archaeology: Orion's Belt: It includes the three bright stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintake The stars are greater or less lightly spaced in a straight line, and so can be visualized as a belt. For some mysterious reason, several archaeological websites show off or reflect the positions of the trilogy of stars that make up the Belt of Orion. The most famous is the trilogy of these large ancient Egyptian pyramids at the Giza plateau. The 2d is seen at Teotihuacán's primary pyramid complex in Mexico. The 0.33 is a trilogy of Hopi Mesas in Arizona. Okay, Orion's Belt, that trilogy of stars, is fairly prominent inside the night sky, however then too so is a lot of other superstar styles. What makes these special to our historical ancestors? A massive deal of this is made by way of 'ancient astronaut' theorists. Somehow that trilogy of stars have to be special, like possibly home turf to ET. Alas, that doesn't seem all that practicable. Alnitak (Zeta Orionis), Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis) and Mintake (Delta Orionis) are very shiny stars (to the naked eye), but they're additionally very, very a long way away. That by myself shows that they may be very un-Sun like. Alnitak is 736 mild-years away and one hundred,000 times our Sun's luminosity; Alnilam is 1340 mild-years distant and 375,000 times as luminous as our Sun; and Mintake is 915 mild-years away because the crow flies and is a whopping 900,000 times the Sun's luminosity. Mintaka is likewise a double famous person machine. Translated, the trio of stars that make up Orion's Belt don't seem to be likely candidates for extraterrestrials that could come a-calling as 'historic astronauts'. I very a lot doubt SETI scientists might target these stars as probable candidates to factor their radio telescopes at.