Space, Time and Little Green Men

A few questions were posed recently that I had the time to respond to and I thought I'd paste the blather here as well...

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1. big bang -- are we ever expanding -- or are we gonna retract?
2. edge of universe...what are we expanding into?
3. notion of eternity
4. planets -- how many earth-like planets are out there, etc.?
5. aliens...and why would they want to hang around primitive us?
6. parellel universes

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Here's my thoughts on the questions posed...
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1. According to some Nobel prize winning research and conjecture by a couple of guys (who I can't remember the names of) the universe has been "expanding" outwardly from a single point for a measurable amount of time...big bang say you...creation on an unimaginable scale say I.

2. Look at it this way...before the universe began its expansion at the beginning of "time"; there WAS NO universe to expand into...meaning that the universe did not exist until it existed! On that same token, albeit on a much larger scale, the universe has continued to expand and "exist" until now and will continue to "expand" and "exist" for all of "time" - Keep in mind that Expand, Exist and Time are all relative terms that are extremely simple-minded terminologies that we've used to describe the indescribable. So, the short answer to the question is: We Are Expanding into Nothing! Wrap your mind around that one for a few hours;)

3. Rather than trying to determine if eternity is reality; determine first if YOU are an eternal being...not your flesh and blood of course, we know that your atoms will eventually stop being you and will become something else - so, wait, that means that you ARE eternal at an infinitesimally small degree...but on we go. Did your soul exist before you were born? If so, that would mean that your soul had no beginning rather just a starting point at which time your soul came to BE you. Now, if something has no beginning than logically it would have no end and would thus be eternal, right? I believe in eternity, whether in some ethereal afterlife or in some altered state that is so far beyond our own reckoning that we haven't begun to imagine it...I believe in it, belief in the eternal, lets call it faith in the unknown, unseen and as of yet unimagined.

4. Earth-like, meaning capable of sustaining human life? Not even the greatest scientists of our time can say without any doubt that there are planets exactly like Earth in every way...Earth is so special and so delicate that it is an unbelievably huge accomplishment for this planet to have turned out the way that it did; especially in regard to this planet being able to sustain not just human life but all of the minutiae forms of life that walk, crawl and squirm under the sun and surf. Short answer, who knows? And - Wouldn't that be cool?

5. Aliens? Maybe...but not the way that we imagine them...with human-like bodies, enlarged heads and uncanny intelligence. More than likely if we were ever to bump into an "Alien" from "Outer Space"; the Alien would probably be in the form of an unknown biological matter or some form of unknown germ or protein...certainly not anything that closely resembles a small child with bug-eyes. As for UFOs, ask the Air Force.

6. Sure, more than likely there are a Trillion-Billion-Million of them exactly like our own universe. Except for the fact that they are so incredibly far away that we could never actually explore them to confirm this thought - certainly this seems entirely possible given the scope of our ever "expanding" universe.
There you have it:)