Martian

Alright kiddies, it's time for A Brief History of Physics.

Apologies to Mr. Hawking.

Back in the day.. I mean, way back in the day, we had it all figured out. Inertia caused an object in motion to continue to want to move. Gravity pulled everything down. Friction provided a counter in any sort of fluid, be it liquid or gas.

We had everything worked out. In fact, the top physicists of the world were conviced that we had such a firm handle on how everything worked that they were saying that in a century or so there would be no more study of physics - we'd run out of stuff to study. We'd already know everything.

Then this crazy haired patent clerk showed up. He came up with some radical ideas - namely that the speed of light was the same to anyone observing it and that the laws of physics were constant for everyone. In other words, if I was travelling at a speed very fast, the speed of light viewed from my position would appear the same as it would from someone who was stationary. We'd see a wave of light that was moving at the same speed relative to us. In order for that to be true, one of the fundamental laws we relied upon to describe the universe had to be false - namely that time isn't constant. He told us that it's actually relative to the observer.

Those same top physicists who earlier said we were running out of stuff to learn viewed this as nonsense. The goofy-haired Austrian was generally considered to be a bit unhinged; yet, like any rebel, he gained a bit of a following. His followers conducted tests to see if what he said carried any weight. To everyone's surprise, it did.

Thus, special relativity was born.

Einstein also came to another, arguably more famous conclusion. He proposed that the energy of an object (E) is equal to it's mass (M) times the speed of light (c) squared. That one was a bit controversial as well, as it meant two things. First, it meant that every object in the universe, even those holding no inertial or potential energy, had a form of energy attached to it. This form of energy came to be known as rest energy and is generally expressed as the mass of an object. It also meant that every form of energy must have some amount of mass attached to it. Because all of that was tied into the idea of special relativity, as relativity gained credence so too did this.

Still, there was a bit of a problem. Relativity was defined as special because it only seemed to apply in a vaccuum, where no gravity was affecting an object. When applied to any object in the grip of another object's gravity, the whole thing broke down. The field of physics was a long way from being complete and the egg heads studying it still had a lot of work to do.

About six years later, ol' Al came through again. He'd been working on the problem through that time and finally tied it together with a new theory. He suggested that the reason gravity caused such problems is because it was actually an expression of a curve in space-time, as the universe had come to be known. He said that it tied into the mass of an object and was really that form of energy referred to in the famous equation; therefore, the greater the mass of an object, the greater the dent in space-time and the greater the dent in space-time, the more profound it's effect was on the mass around it. With that, Newton's old rules finally could be safely done away with. As it applied to everything, this new field was deemed general relativity.

Once they got over the idea that some schmuk in a patent office had beaten them to it, the world's physicists were thrilled. Suddenly there was this whole unexplored aspect of physics available to them and they happily went on their way, conducting the zany experiments as physicists are wont to do, with all manner of beakers and lab equipment and such. That was all well and good for another decade or so; then it began to be observed that general relativity also had it's limits. There were aspects of observed reality that it just couldn't explain; in particular, general relativity broke down at the subatomic level. Therefore a new theory was needed.

The foundations of the new theory came about in that decade and are still being studied and solidified today. Among the most fundamental aspects of this was the concept of quanta. The idea was that energy, which had previously been thought of as an infinite scale, could at very small levels be broken down into discrete measurable units. These units were then referred to as quanta (singular quantum), from which the new field of study later took it's name of quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanics suggested a lot of radical new ideas; among them was the idea that a particle isn't a particle and a wave isn't a wave; they're both expressions of the same thing. A guy named Schrodinger commited some hypothetical animal cruelty and was credited with the idea that an object who's state is unobserved is undefined; it doesn't have a state until someone records it. A guy by the name of Heisenberg also told us that we could never measure anything with complete accuracy and that the very act of observing an objects state changed it. And then there's a crazy quadrapalegic; he's one of the most prominent minds in the field and continues to suggest changes. He suggested the idea that there are gravity wells out there that are so strong, that not even light is able to escape their pull; thus, we have no way to observe them. It hasn't actually been proven that black holes exist yet, but they're generally accepted. Hawking also suggested that the universe is not infinite (as was previously thought) but doesn't have any observable limits. The common metaphor used to illustrate this is that of an ant on the surface of a balloon; as far as the ant is concerned, it can walk forever, but that doesn't mean the balloon is infinitely large.

So there's a very brief rundown of some of the most important concepts that go into a discussion like this. General relativity gives us the old idea that we can't go faster than light; E=MC^2 tells us as much. Wormholes and black holes and other phenomena can change things up, assuming they exist; and quantum mechanics suggests that it is in fact possible to propogate the traits of an item and cause them to exist at two discrete points in space, meaning that teleportation may in fact be possible.

Note that some of those ideas contradict each other.

The number one concept I take away from it all is that we just don't know; the only thing we're sure of is how little we do know about how everything really works. It's entirely possible that right now someone is working on a new theory and, like Einstein did a century ago, will publish it and throw everything we thought we knew about the universe out the window. This could happen tomorrow. It could happen a century from now. It may never happen.

I don't know.

After that very long and convoluted ramble, it's time for me to get back on topic. I will say that I don't believe in life on other planets. What I believe in is the possibility of life on other planets. I also believe in the possibility of contact with that life occuring, or having occured already.

Here's the kicker, though : we're all too obsessed with Star Trek. The prevailing concept of extra-terrestrial life holds it as essentially terrestrial in form. When most people think of aliens, they think of them as having observable terrestrial characteristics. These aliens invariably have a head, two arms, two legs. They have eyes and ears and mouths and metabolic systems like ours. They may not breath the mix of nitrogen and oxygen we're used to, but they do generally breathe. They eat, they expel waste, they do everything in a human fashion. This post is too long already, so I won't get into the reasons why we tend to thinkof alien life as not so alien (there are some good ones), but we generally do. The reality is that alien life may not even be close to what we're used to. An alien might not eat. It might use something similar to photosynthesis, drawing the energy it needs from the sun. It might draw energy from some other form of radiation. It might be capable of some limited form of fission and shit out nuclear waste. It may have a body like ours. It may exist in a liquid form. It may not even look like life. It's possible that this alien would be incapable of recognizing us as intelligent life. The opposite is also true.

One of my favourite sci-fi scenes comes from the film Men In Black. When Z, the head honcho, dispatches an agent to meet a new diplomat, the agent asks Z if the alien he's meeting is humanoid. Z replies, "You wish. Bring a sponge."

That is, to me, much more likely. If we do meet some form of extraterrestrial being, who's to say we'll even know that's what it is?

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame