Rumi Nations

Are we alone in the universe? The one question that fascinates me more than any other. And my perspectives are these. The sheer complexity of biological forms makes me think that the evolution of intelligent life forms (such as humans) is likely to be a rather sparse occurrence. There will be many Earth-like planets … perhaps at least millions in the outer arms of the Milky Way revolving around stars like the Sun that the Earth revolves around. But the temperatures have to be just right for water to be plentiful in all three states. What were the stuff available in the early Earth that created the conditions that led to the emergence of primitive life forms? A planet with a lot of volcanic activity, lot of carbon-based complex organic molecules, a planet with continental plates slowly drifting, pushing, merging, separating, rising, and falling, lots of lightning, etc. How many planets will have all these enablers? Reduces the candidate planets to perhaps thousands. Then on pl...

I admire the visionary thinking behind 2012. It's easy to dismiss it as typical Hollywood production-line stuff but I think the movie has a message if only people are willing to ponder. Of course, the movie could have done without all the razzmatazz: the special effects and the biblical allusions. But that's perhaps necessary to engage an audience with very short attention spans. I would perhaps have preferred a movie that debated not only this particular possibility that might put a spanner in all our corporate-ladder-climbing careers but other possibilities as well. But may be that's up to Seth Sostak and Discvoery Channel. The world may not quite turn turtle come 2012 and the Mayans may not quite have gotten it right — I certainly hope so — but there are dangers on the horizon for humanity. This permanent fiesta can't last. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, as Newton's Third Law says. What we are doing to the planet will have an equal and opposite ...