QQC A Short History of Nearly Everything 2

"With their radio telescopes they can capture wisps of radiation
so preposterously faint that the total amount of energy collected from outside
the solar system by all of them together since collecting began (in
1951) is 'less than the energy of a single snowflake striking the ground' in
the words of Carl Sagan."

Again, this is one of those "wow" quotes. What is the energy of a snowflake hitting the ground? Probably some microscpopic amount, and yet we are able to fill in the blanks of the cosmic map with that energy. It's astounding how finely sensitive these instruments are. To the untrained eye, the big, hulking sattelite dishes look anything but sensitive. But of all the detection instruments on earth, they must be some of the finest.

It's also interesting to think about how much energy we know is out there in space, and know how little of it actually comes to our lonely little corner of the universe. The facts really put our loneliness into a rather depressing perspective.

QQC A Short History of Nearly Everything

"It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive (but all of which had once been you.)

Uh, wow. I never really thought about it like that before. The question that necessitates an answer would then be, how are we even alive in the first place?

I can't believe that just my magically placing these atoms together, you would come out with a human. Come to think of it, there's "organic" matter everywhere the universe, massive clouds of it. It's interesting how regardless of how much of the stuff of life is present, it takes some miracle to spontaneously create life.

So yes, the question really is, how are we even alive? Is it the networking of the molecules? Is it something else that we have no understanding of as of yet? Possibly. It would certainly be neat to find out.