The Meaning Of Life

“What is the meaning of life?” Although this is a pretty frequent question amongst almost every human being, it is sometimes cast away from the regular guy’s everyday line of thoughts.

The answer can’t be specified accurately, but there are some patterns in both Nature and men that give us a glimpse of our purpose in life.

In Nature, every single living being strives for one objective: ensure its survival. How do they manage to comply with this objective? By hunting down prey for food or finding good plants to eat, finding shelter against the weather conditions and predators, and last but not least, reproducing. But while they struggle to survive, deep underneath their simple existence, their bodies are at work: genetically speaking, that is. The simple fact that they struggle to survive means they are also trying to adapt themselves to environmental and food chain changes. This may not be particularly visible immediately but generation after generation one single different gene can make the difference between survival and extinction.

I can then conclude that in Nature, the purpose of every living being is not to survive but also to evolve, ensuring the continuation of the species.

Taking all this into account, it gets easier to understand our own purpose in life. I believe our struggle to survive is, on the whole, different from a rabbit’s or a zebra’s. We don’t need to actually hunt down our food. We can either raise it or buy it in the market just around the corner. But on the other hand, we need to work for money in order to buy food. We don’t need to hide from predators: technically, we have no natural predators. We are only threatened pretty much by ourselves and our wars. We have our houses to protect us from the weather. We have proven ourselves pretty adaptable to changes.

So right now we know that one of our objectives during our lifetime is to try and improve the community in order to get the money to pay for food and other goods and commodities. But how to ensure the continuation of the human species?

Human beings have proven themselves pretty adaptable to changes, at all levels (environmental, etc). It is even possible to compare humans with virus: we were (and still are) capable to establish ourselves anywhere on the planet’s surface. Genetically, we don’t differ much from the original Homo sapiens sapiens. But changes do occur, although too small to be detected when considering a short amount of time. Changes do occur during the division of our sexual cells: they are not exactly divided in two, as some small mutations occur, almost imperceptible. These mutations may cause absolutely no effects other than maybe a slight change in the hair’s colour, or they may cause severe deficiencies or actually make us immune to a given type of virus or bacteria. The fact is that we are permanently evolving, making improvements under the hood, without even knowing it, just by doing something as natural and necessary as reproducing. Natural selection at its best (or worst).

Love?

What is love? Some would say it is just a word. Others would say it is a complex mixture of chemicals. And many see it has the most wonderful of feelings. But what is it exactly? Let's find out...

First, let me try and explain the many meanings of the word "love". Love can be used to express pleasure (as "I loved spending the day with you") or to express the feeling one has for another (as "I love you"). By now we can see it is a matter of interpretation. And I must remeber you, dear readers, that in different languages, the word "love" is translated in different ways according to the meaning ("love" as pleasure is translated to "adorar/gostar" in portuguese, and "love" as the feeling is translated as "amar" in portuguese). The "love" I will be referring to is the sentimental one.

How to explain love? It is not easy to explain what love is. One has to feel it to know what it is. But the ultimate question now is how to know we are in love? That is easy to explain. Have you ever felt like you can't get away from someone? Ever felt your heart pounding in your chest so hard it hurts you when you are close to someone or when you think of this person? Ever felt excited when you know you are going out with someone? All you think about is that person? Well then, I managed to explain what is the feeling of being in love with someone.

Love is both physical and psychological. Your body knows when you are in love. And it shows other people what you feel. When you are in love, you keep smiling all the time, you are always in a good mood.

And now, in a different matter, lets try and discuss love between people of the same sex. Many people (unfortunately too many) still think that a homossexual (both gay and lesbian) relationship is nothing more than sex. What people don't know is that there can be true love between people of the same sex. I have many gay/lesbian friends, and I must confess I have never seen such a happy couple in my life than a gay couple. People have to understand that love is indifterent to sexual orientation.

I believe I speak for all of us who are in love when I say that love is definatelly the most wonderful feeling ever.

Image Collection

A collection of the most beautiful sights the Universe has to offer us! I hope enjoy watching them as much as I have enjoyed posting them!

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The Sun

The Moon

Reflection Nebula

The Retina Nebula

The Keyhole Nebula

The Lagoon Nebula

The Omega Nebula

The Orion Nebula

The Cone Nebula

Cyngus Loop Nebula

The Dumbbell Nebula

The Helix Nebula

The Hourglass Nebula

The Bubble Nebula

Caffeine Nebula

The Cat's Eye Nebula

How Many Do You Think?

The Universe. It is simply unique. But which one is this one? Were there any before now? Let's think about it!

The Big Bang, a cataclysmic event which created the Universe and along with it all the beauty we can see. Galaxies, nebulas, stars... All the most admirable of sights! And still, the Universe is changing, increasing in size and shape. Mutating, as to say. But will it ever stop increasing? Will it ever shrink? We believe so. The Big Crunch, also a cataclysmic event, will result in another so called "sphere" of matter, term I have used before to describe the earlier condition of our Universe.
The Big Crunch theory states that if a certain percentage of the original amount of matter and energy (meaning this the density of the Universe) still persists, the Universe will shrink, thus restarting the process.

So, considering the Big Crunch theory, we can ask ourselves about how many Universes were there before the current one. And there might be many more in a very distant future. Possibilities are immense, and together with "Three Universes Beyond", we can picture events like never before!

Three Universes Beyond

Parallel Universes. The since long Sci-Fi movies money making theory. Although not fully proved, possibilities are infinite!

When considering the Big Bang theory for the creation of the Universe, we must also consider the place where it happened. If, of course, we can call it a place, as I will explain later on.
The Big Bang theory tells us that, since the initial explosion, the Universe is still expanding. But where is it expanding to? Well, it is expanding into nothing, as we can’t consider the infinite as a physical place. We can consider it as a bright white “place” with a high pitch sound echoing through it. And this leads us to our initial question, being it the existence (or inexistence) of multiple Universes. Onwards.
What about the possibility of multiple Big Bangs? “Spheres” of matter and energy could be scattered throughout the infinite, and all of these could have burst into mighty explosions, creating multiple Universes. Their boundaries with the infinite might not yet have reached the boundaries of our own Universe, but if this theory is correct, possibly, in a few million years, we might be able to travel into a different, new Universe. Although, many variables must be considered. The type of matter produced during the hypothetical Big Bang, for instance. A slight difference of gravitational pull on the initial “sphere” could have created new elements. Instead of creating atoms of hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, etc. Other elements could have been created. These being incompatible with our own known elements. So, during the hypothetical fusion of the two or more Universes, we might experience occurrences never know before: the destruction of both Universes, the creation of new elements, etc. The possibilities are unlimited!

Life Aspects

Is there life outside the Universe? This is the question that haunts us.

Many people believe that we are alone in the Universe, mostly due to religious beliefs. Only one God and we are Its only creation. I must confess that I am completely agnostic, although this does not interfere with any of my theories.

But are we really alone? Scientist throughout the centuries have been interested in what lies beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. Earlier scientists, like Galileo, have been thwarted by the early church, which in a try to protect itself disrupted many new scientific revelations. Discoveries were then maintained in secrecy, exchanged only between trustworthy people like other scientists. The discovery rate was slow but steady.

The many discoveries made lead us to today. We live in an era of such technological and scientific richness that we are surrounded in our daily routines by technology and science. Many people probably don’t think how a microwave oven works. How an electrical heating system produces heat. How a cell phone transmits its signal. We are surrounded by science and technology, although barely felt.

This leads us to our ultimate question: Are we alone in the Universe?
As said before, we don’t pay much attention to the scientific discoveries related to Space. Many people think it is a waste of time and money. But the Universe is immense! Bigger than anything we can think of! Quoting from the movie Contact: “The Universe is a pretty big place, it is bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So, if it is just us, seems like an awful waste of space, right?” I believe this says it all.
We can not pretend that we are alone in the Universe. Somewhere, in the infinity of it, there is some kind of living being, maybe not carbon based like us, but still living nonetheless. It is also possible to find an energy like being, no body, just mind and intelligence. It would be a dream come true to all of us life seekers.

Maybe the ET is out there, somewhere, not calling home, but calling us!

UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) can be the proof of life outside Earth, as it can also be our imagination or even our governments’ military forces. We must consider other carbon based beings, more intelligent and more advanced than us. Their civilization might be older than our's, had more time to evolve, as well as not having the religious concerns that slowed us down.

If we are alone or not, no one knows. It is up to us to decide in what to believe. So let us keep our minds and the Earth's boundaries open to our interstellar neighbors!

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!