Tuesday 28 October 2014

"Brian Cox: I am alone in the Universe"

From The Metro:

Professor Brian Cox has said that he is likely to be alone in the universe, and that there is no other intelligent life.

The TV physicist has claimed that the billion-year process that lead to his birth was likely to be a fluke, and it was improbable that the process had been recreated on Earth or any other planet.

He blames a number of ‘evolutionary bottlenecks’ for the absence of intelligent beings apart from himself, despite a huge number of them living in the solar system.

He made the startling claims in an episode of BBC’s Human Universe, adding: "There is only one advanced, technological, civilised person in this galaxy and there has only ever been one. That’s me, I am unique."

10 comments:

Sackerson said...

What universe? Take solipsism to its conclusion.

View from the Solent said...

Sackerson, the universe that exists because I do.

DBC Reed said...

Why is the European Space Agency trying to make Rosetta space probe link up with comet to see if its carrying signs of life, if the All Knowing One says life started by chance on Earth only?

Tim Almond said...

DBC,

Because Cox is talking nonsense. This is what happens when people get celebrity status - they pronounce on things that aren't their speciality, nor have they done the research on.

The National Academy of Sciences researched 42,000 Sun-like stars of the 100-400 billion stars and found 10 that were the same size of earth and in the same habitable zone as earth. Around 5% of all stars are like our sun, so out of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy, which means 5 billion suns, and of those 1/4200 have an earth-like planet, which gives you over 10 million earth-like planets in our galaxy. Some of these could have incredibly advanced life. Hell, they might even be like the Vulcans in First Contact, that they know we're here, but to them, we're like cockroaches.

Lola said...

BDCR. Given your rather strange, even out of this world, view of economics, and seeing as you know so much about intelligent life elsewhere in the Galaxy, is there something you aren't telling us?

Lola said...
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Sackerson said...

Vfts: you may exist and yet the universe may be an illusion; it may be that a deluded you is the only reality.

Macheath said...

"...they know we're here, but to them, we're like cockroaches."

I can't imagine our broadcasts to the universe are helping; when series one of 'TOWIE' gets to Alpha Centauri next Spring, I imagine our nearest neighbours will finally decide to give us a very wide berth indeed.

Mark Wadsworth said...

S, VFTS, I personally know that the universe must exist outside my own mind because I definitely exist and I don't have that much imagination.

DBC, why? Because they can get funding for it and it's good fun.

TS, I agree, the maths must win out.

L, now now.

McH, there's worse. What about Made In Chelsea?

Lola said...

MW. I wasn't being mean to DBCR. I was trying to be gently and amusingly chiding. You can't easily get 'tone' across in these posts.