When we receive the first signal, life on Earth will change forever...
NASA's SETI project has installed gigantic antennas to receive signals from extraterrestrial beings, and at the same time, sending out signals as radio waves that travel at the speed of light. The nearest star to us is 60 light-years away. Look at it both ways: if there were intelligent lives in another part of the galaxy, their "noises" would have reached us by now. But we haven't received any signal. Why?
Is life so rare that it exists only on Earth? Look at Earth's conditions, one can't help but realize lives on Earth - including non-human lives - are precious. Take Europa, whose surface is a frozen ocean, for comparison - there may be lives underneath the icy surface, but probably not intelligent lives. Or look at Io (another Jupiter's moon), a world comparable to Dante's Inferno, where volcanoes never stop erupting.
Lives are being able to thrive on Earth because of the Sun and the Earth's atmosphere that protects us.
But our Sun, too - 5 billion years from now - will die.
By that time, everything will end here.
But will it be the end of humanity?
Death is the ultimate price we will pay to have human consciousness, intelligence, emotions and other capabilities, to be aware of all that shimmering awareness and all that love.
Being in this world is already a privilege. Considering all possible genetic combinations that happen by chance, it's amazing that I happened at all.
What does it mean to be immortal?
Unlike all other creatures on this planet, we humans are the only ones who are aware of our transience.
Immortality - a quest for more Time - is a dream that has driven humanity for generations.
We are in a constant search for the Elixir of Life. We yearn for the lost time that lingers on in our memory.
Of all time's effects on us, the most profound is that one day, it will end. Our time is limited, so our Time is precious. The knowledge of limited Time has shaped us as humans.
If we could hold back an amount of Time, what would it mean for us?
Happy People Dancing on Planet Earth
What are these humans doing?Dancing.
Many humans on Earth exhibit periods of happiness, and one method of displaying happiness is dancing. Happiness and dancing transcend boundaries and occur in every human society.
Matt Harding traveled through many nations on Earth, started dancing, and filmed the result. The video is perhaps a dramatic example that humans from all over planet Earth feel a common bond as part of a single species. Happiness is frequently contagious -- few people are able to watch this video without smiling.
Praan (the ‘Stream of Life’) song:
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
