So please help out a dumb guy that gets through life on what appears to be common sense.
We only base these thoughts on what we think we know, correct?Are they assumptions or facts? I read all this stuff with a lot of "what if" thoughts. Questions with no one to ask or answer.
The habitable zone could be anywhere. IF there were undetectable forces we do not understand habitable could be anywhere, no?
Deep brother. Apologize upfront for the 'mini-rant"
First, I'll say that I too try to rely on common sense. Underpinning EVERYTHING in this thread, there is science. Hard to put any of this in context without it.
Science happens to appeal of my sense of "common sense". That's why I like it, get some of it, and 'believe" in it. Up to a point.
Cosmology, spectrograph imaging, electromagnetic spectrum analysis, thermodynamics, chemistry, physics up the wazoo, etc.. Some of that stuff is WELL understood for hundreds of years now. Some stuff, not so much, not so long.
Example, we can tell if its 80 degrees outside, or 90 degrees, with really good accuracy. How do we tell what the temperature is somewhere, say, 100 billion miles away? Well, we can only go by what we know, and yes, by what we THINK we know how to do that measurement accurately from here.
Sometimes we are proven right. A lot of times, we still dont know stuff.
500 years ago, we thought the earth was the center of the universe and EVERYTHING, the WHOLE universe, revolved around us. We know now that's not even remotely true, and if one had said that 500 years, one might get their head chopped off by local authorities.
Another example, how do we know there is such a thing called "gravity"?
Why don't we float off the surface of the Earth? How did Gene Cernan on Apollo 17 bounce like a ping pong ball wearing a 200 lb spacesuit (plus his own 175 lb body weight) on the moon? That thing called "gravity" again - different on a place with less mass than the earth (1/6 of earth on the moon).
How does gravity make clocks on our moving GPS satellites above the earth run SLOWER than stationary clocks down here on the earth? Einstein did the math over 100 years ago (special relativity). It assumes, however, that the speed of light is the same EVERYwhere in the Universe. Is it?
All we know is this little corner we live in, but it understandably influences our thinking about other places in the universe.
Even then, there are other BIG assumptions in gravity mathematics. There must be such a thing as "gravity", even though we haven't yet found the particle theorized to be a "graviton"?
We haven't found ANY gravitons yet. Maybe, because there AREN'T any, or they are WAY different than what we think?
LSS, what do we really know? A LOT, but not all of it is for sure,
Cuz we cant, and likely never will be able to get to, for example, one million LY's away. We conclude what we think is going on out there based on indirect measurement/evidence. Out there, it might not truly be the case.
Are there other possibilities, effects, etc., going on one million LY's away? Absolutely likely there ARE a million things "out there" we DONT know anything about, let alone stuff happening right under our noses.
H***, a "go-zillion" neutrinos -- we think -- went through me a minute ago, and will do it again a minute from now. That's what the "math" says anyway. I didnt/never will feel a thing.
Right here, on the third rock from the Sun, one of a hundred billion rocks, going around 200 billion other suns, in this galaxy alone (one of maybe a trillion galaxies like it in the Universe.
All that to say, there is a ton of merit to your observation about likelihood there are a great many things we DONT and really CANNOT, and may NEVER know.
Even though SOME scientists hate the word, there is a lotta "faith" embedded in their work They gotta believe in things they haven't seen but "know" indirectly it must be there..
The beauty, or the foolishness, or both, of humankind's nature, is that ENOUGH of us care about, and KEEP trying to find out, about how stuff works. That's how we got C-bodies, Voyagers, Webb telescopes, disease cures, Silly Putty, Cinnabons, whatever, etc.
Common sense tells me we DO know a few things.
Its also how we KNOW the Earth is NOT flat .. well, some of us anyway believe that.
