Insomnia paid me a visit last night, so I rolled a documentary by nuclear physicist Stanton T. Friedman. Enjoyed it.
History’s shown us that our mortal understanding of physics is constantly evolving, and our assumptions about how the universe works has been way far off on many occasions. For instance, we once thought a man would die if he traveled over 30 mph in a locomotive. And while the sun’s been working the way it does for billions of years, it’s only since 1937 that we understood its physics. That’s yesterday.
Here Stanton Friedman discusses all of that, putting things into a fresh context. I particularly liked his points on fission vs. fusion, as well as the “hot potato” factor, both of which address the physical concerns of traveling at high speeds. When it comes to astrophysics, we’ve only been going by what we understand. And we’ve been wrong before.
This all calls for us to re-evaluate the notion:
Sure, the universe is infinite, with an unimaginable number of stars. And, sure, statistically speaking, the universe is likely teeming with life. Even intelligent life. However, such stars are just too far away for such life to travel all the way over here to Earth.
Friedman, a doctor on the subject, points out that this notion is nonsense.
And there’s Part 2:
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