Hi All
I have been given the topic Stargazing (something I don't do).
I can think of 5 reasons to do it:
Any other reasons (especially humorous ones ) gratefully accepted.
Same here, it really draws you in.
Is it heavy reading?
You can do it anywhere.
Cuddling under the stars is romantic. Does that count as stargazing?
The same moon shines over you, as it does me. If I'm looking at moon, is it not as if I am looking at your beloved face? ;)
Remember odds are someone/thing out there is gazing back.
It's a neat idea, but I think it is pandering to egocentrism. To quote Douglas Adams:
“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”
It is a bit bleak to think maybe we are just an insignificant part of the universe, so people like to come up with ideas to make them feel a bit better. Gods, aliens, simulation runners - all flatter us by noticing us, much more exciting that a cold and uncaring universe.
If you want to go down a related rabbit hole, check out Roko's Basilisk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LessWrong#Roko.27s_basilisk. But be warned, clicking on the link could expose you to a lifetime of torture!
OP: I reckon you will get top marks if you can wander your speech over Jar Jar B's ground. Afterall, stargazing tends to prompt those big questions.
wander your speech over Jar Jar B's ground.
@ OP, when I'm looking up at the stars, I can't help but wonder where the hell is everyone , just like Physicist Enrico Fermi did almost 60 years ago. If you prefer a vid to reading.
My personal favourite explanation is that we're living in a simulation, seeing what we need to see when we need to see it.
What I find inspiring is that, even if we are in a simulation or many orders of magnitude down in levels of simulation, somewhere along the line something escaped the primordial ooze to become us and to result in simulations that made us – and that is cool :)
Roko Basilisk, aka the AI version of Pascal's wager. Fortunately for me, my partner in crime is an existentialist. Whenever I tend towards "egocentrism", she is there to remind me that the universe is neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we are.
@Jar Jar Binks:
The answer to Fermi's paradox that always gives me pause is which side of a great filter we may be, as it is much more probable we are on the early side, if such a filter exists.
So I just do my best, day to day.
@Jar Jar Binks:
I get quite cross when my religious friends try Pascal's wager on me as a reason for belief. It is such a shallow conceit - is that all they have!
Sadly, Pascal was a brilliant scientist/mathematician, but I think he might be remembered most for this dumb bit of ontological repartee more than anything else. And he had a cracking first name!
he had a cracking first name!
He sure did.At our place, we use it as a form of expletive:) It is a hell of a lot more satisfying to let out a resounding oh Blaise! after you've stepped , barefoot, on a lego piece than the usual kid-friendly "oh sugar". Even the twins have started using the expression :/ Anything that gets them interested in algebra and combinatorics can't be bad, right? :p
We're having home-made ice-cream sandwiches on Sunday. 4 different flavours of ice-creams will be available.Each child will be able to stuff any combination of those 4 ice-creams between 2 cookies to make their sandwiches.They could also choose to have plain cookies with no ice-cream. But let's face it , any child forgoing ice-cream is about as likely as the Great Filter being behind us.However, it is still a possibility that needs to be factored in the equation.
My question is:how many possible combinations of ice-cream sandwiches will the children be able to create? It took my kids less than a minute to find the correct answer using a pascal's triangle. They are always super-motivated when it comes to ice-cream.
that the universe is neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we are.
Not from me obviously. I was paraphrasing Carl Sagan, brilliant scientist-essayist. He was among those who persuaded NASA to aim the camera of the Voyager 1 back toward the earth and take this picture.
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilisation, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
If that doesn't put things in perspective… :)
Zhangzi raised question along this line 300 years ago. Google translate
I guess it is linked to the 4th dimension that multiples "you" can exist simultaneously in various forms.
@mskeggs, what do you make of Nasa's discovery of liquid water on Mars and maybe more importantly, of its planetary director's comment :
Everywhere we go where there is liquid water, we find life.
Didn't we find evidence of ice geysers shooting from the surface of Europa, as well as evidence that its ocean could have Hadley Cells? As for Enceladus, it has a warm ocean:
Astrophysicists working with NASA's Saturn sweeping Cassini spacecraft have just announced that Enceladus has a warm ocean at its southern pole with ongoing hydrothermal activity—the first ever discovered outside of Earth. This new research, published in the journal Nature, builds upon last year's discovery of the moon's 6-mile-deep ocean, which is also believed to contain many of the chemicals commonly associated with life.
@Jar Jar Binks
Given the proper atmosphere and concomitant surface-conditions that Mars, certainly, is known to have once had, AND given the crazy (at both ends of the échelle celsius - please enjoy my magnificent grasp of French) extremophiles that exist here on Earth, I reckon that there are - definitely and defiantly - still living little beasties to be discovered.
Please enjoy my magnificent grasp of tortuous paragraphs.
Dinner.
Everywhere we go
We've "been" to Europa and Enceladus.
where there is liquid water
both have oceans
we find life.
So we've found extraterrestrial life and someone forgot to tell me about it?
Edit:
@Tas
échelle celsius
According to the Mrs, the proper translation is l’échelle de température centigrade. Both Wikis concord that l'echelle de temperature celsius is the inverse of the échelle de température centigrade :
l'échelle initialement définie par Anders Celsius en 1742 avait son zéro au point d'ébullition de l'eau et 100 degrés à son point de congélation. L'année suivante, le français Jean-Pierre Christin inverse l'échelle, qui est donc désormais croissante du froid vers le chaud.
@Jar Jar Binks: Are you telling me that you haven't seen Star Wars?
The beasties that haven't quite made the big-screen, yet, will probably be very difficult to find. Conditions nastier than Tatooine, in places.
On planets that have oceans (you what's coming), Alien Shark Creatures may have eaten most of the beasties that would otherwise be easier to find.
Gazing up at the infinite helps you put things into perspective
My idea of stargazing is reading endless articles about the Kardashians.
jesus what an abomination
I have been given the topic Stargazing (something I don't).
Get enthused, my friend.
Do you have an Instagram account?
Follow this, this, and this account.
Just clicked on the actual account page of the latter for the first time in a long time. I can't believe that he isn't way past 20K followers at this point.
Maybe you can arrange a few more for him, Paul…
Followed all 3 - Cheers
I think you overlooked Commander Kelly who's on the ISS for a year and posts heaps of stars and amazingness direct to the internet from space!
Thanks!
How about incorporate something about horoscopes!?
Love how your #1 answer is such an OzBargainer response lol.
We went to the Sydney observatory last year. One of the most interesting parts of the tour was when they described (with the help of pictures) just how infinite space is and how tiny we are in the grand scheme of things.
You can see shooting stars!
…Which are not actually stars but a piece of rock/debris that burns up quickly as it hits the earth's atmosphere.
What's so amazing,
That keeps us stargazing,
And what do we think we might see?
Looking at the sky makes some of us feel closer to:
the dearly departed: lion king reference; the little prince/Robbie william reference
or someone we love.
Are you allowed to sing in your presentation?
http://montypython.net/scripts/galaxy.php
I do suppose that you could just quote some of the lyrics of starry-night inspiration -
Wish I knew what you were looking for
Might have known what you would findAnd it's something quite peculiar
Something that's shimmering and white
It leads you here despite your destination
Under the Milky Way tonight
The Church '#youcanguessthetitle'
Both of those are on Youtube in speaky and singy form.
As is this; unrelated, but thanks for reminding me of this Stina Nordenstam song.
I remember it even getting a play on Triple J.
More than ten orbits of our little planet around our littleish star since this was released.
Well, that's not depressing at all… :'(
Just very recently, this guy: https://instagram.com/vincestagrammed has been getting into some concerted stargazing stuff.
Worth a follow, in any case.
Smidge from the arc of the Hubble
OP, just on the offchance that you weren't hit on the head by a meteorite - and maybe log in to OzBargain again, sometime, I trust that your engagement with the task you were set was somewhat more impressive than your engagement with the thread you started…
I’m reading a book about anti-gravity.. It’s impossible to put down!