Sorry this is not about Star Trek, that intro is really, really catchy.

It's one of my obsessions, now alongside with conspiracy theories, zombies, ghosts, time travel and horror.

Space includes everything from aliens to the outer reaches of the galaxy, to some science-fiction films to television, recently I've become obsessed with it and as a player of the highly obtained with a horrible ending Mass Effect series space travel and what it contains has always intrigued me.

I can now only classify it as one of my obsessions. Does anyone else have an obsession with the final frontier?

If not, you'll at least be remotely interested in it, right?

This thread is now open to discuss THE FINAL FRONTIER and what interests you about it.

This post was last modified: 05-16-2012 07:48 PM by Some_Bloke.

im interested in astronomy for various reasons- but mainly as a part of a larger interest in understanding where life (as in the life force, as in nature) came from, and its purpose, if any. plus, looking at pictures of space is soothing.

Check these out:
When Will time End http://youtu.be/5OFThORmR-s

Is the Universe Infinite http://youtu.be/dG1JpC5jels

Temporal Distortion http://vimeo.com/36684976  (time lapse video of a star gazer)

Neil DeGrasse Tyson with Stephen Colbert http://youtu.be/VBUVLBtxdj0

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Culturally I'm interested to know how people (like Ovid) knew about the beginnings of the universe without any technology or long philosophical contemplation. If you think about what they say, you may wonder where they got that knowledge...

From Metamorphoses (Ancient Greek text by Ovid):
THE CREATION

[5] Before the ocean and the earth appeared—before the skies had overspread them all—the face of Nature in a vast expanse was naught but Chaos uniformly waste. It was a rude and undeveloped mass, that nothing made except a ponderous weight; and all discordant elements confused, were there congested in a shapeless heap. As yet the sun afforded earth no light, nor did the moon renew her crescent horns; the earth was not suspended in the air exactly balanced by her heavy weight. Not far along the margin of the shores had Amphitrite stretched her lengthened arms,—for all the land was mixed with sea and air. The land was soft, the sea unfit to sail, the atmosphere opaque, to naught was given a proper form, in everything was strife, and all was mingled in a seething mass—with hot the cold parts strove, and wet with dry and soft with hard, and weight with empty void.

[21] But God, or kindly Nature, ended strife—he cut the land from skies, the sea from land, the heavens ethereal from material air; and when were all evolved from that dark mass he bound the fractious parts in tranquil peace. The fiery element of convex heaven leaped from the mass devoid of dragging weight, and chose the summit arch to which the air as next in quality was next in place. The earth more dense attracted grosser parts and moved by gravity sank underneath; and last of all the wide surrounding waves in deeper channels rolled around the globe.

[32] And when this God—which one is yet unknown—had carved asunder that discordant mass, had thus reduced it to its elements, that every part should equally combine, when time began He rounded out the earth and moulded it to form a mighty globe. Then poured He forth the deeps and gave command that they should billow in the rapid winds, that they should compass every shore of earth. he also added fountains, pools and lakes, and bound with shelving banks the slanting streams, which partly are absorbed and partly join the boundless ocean. Thus received amid the wide expanse of uncontrolled waves, they beat the shores instead of crooked banks. At His command the boundless plains extend, the valleys are depressed, the woods are clothed in green, the stony mountains rise. And as the heavens are intersected on the right by two broad zones, by two that cut the left, and by a fifth consumed with ardent heat, with such a number did the careful God mark off the compassed weight, and thus the earth received as many climes.—Such heat consumes the middle zone that none may dwell therein; and two extremes are covered with deep snow; and two are placed betwixt the hot and cold, which mixed together give a temperate clime; and over all the atmosphere suspends with weight proportioned to the fiery sky, exactly as the weight of earth compares with weight of water.

[52] And He ordered mist to gather in the air and spread the clouds. He fixed the thunders that disturb our souls, and brought the lightning on destructive winds that also waft the cold. Nor did the great Artificer permit these mighty winds to blow unbounded in the pathless skies, but each discordant brother fixed in space, although His power can scarce restrain their rage to rend the universe. At His command to far Aurora, Eurus took his way, to Nabath, Persia, and that mountain range first gilded by the dawn; and Zephyr's flight was towards the evening star and peaceful shores, warm with the setting sun; and Boreas invaded Scythia and the northern snows; and Auster wafted to the distant south where clouds and rain encompass his abode.—and over these He fixed the liquid sky, devoid of weight and free from earthly dross.

[69] And scarcely had He separated these and fixed their certain bounds, when all the stars, which long were pressed and hidden in the mass, began to gleam out from the plains of heaven, and traversed, with the Gods, bright ether fields: and lest some part might be bereft of life the gleaming waves were filled with twinkling fish; the earth was covered with wild animals; the agitated air was filled with birds.

[76] But one more perfect and more sanctified, a being capable of lofty thought, intelligent to rule, was wanting still man was created! Did the Unknown God designing then a better world make man of seed divine? or did Prometheus take the new soil of earth (that still contained some godly element of Heaven's Life) and use it to create the race of man; first mingling it with water of new streams; so that his new creation, upright man, was made in image of commanding Gods? On earth the brute creation bends its gaze, but man was given a lofty countenance and was commanded to behold the skies; and with an upright face may view the stars:—and so it was that shapeless clay put on the form of man till then unknown to earth.

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Compilation of Creation Hymns from Hindu philosophy
(the beginning is about space, the ending is more based on philosophy, so please forgive the religious rhetoric)
http://vimeo.com/4594545

btw, the Star Trek intro is awesome. If you haven't already, you should go on youtube and subscribe to the channel SpaceRip. It has awesome HD space footage.

This post was last modified: 05-16-2012 11:15 PM by sg1008.

I've got a ginormous map from "Millenium of Maps" (did I mention maps are one of my obsessions?) of the solar system, then a jump to the sun's neighbourhood, then another jump to "Our Galactic Realm", on up to "Our Supercluster".  After that, the order of magnitude just gets too big to put in any more, and we reach the edge of the maps.  

Personally, I like the theory of the "Membrane Multiverse", where the so-called "bulks" jostle each other, and the friction thus produced between two of them produces a Big Bang and generates a new universe.  Which explains why we'd have stars in our universe that pre-date the Big Bang: they'd be the leftovers from the last Big Bang.  It also gets rid of any need to bring Dark Matter into the mix to explain away the anomolies of why the universe doesn't fly apart under it's own rotation, since the 'Branes would exert huge pressures.  We just wouldn't be able to see them - it'd be like our own gut microbes trying to work out a human city.  

Personally, I think that we are a bit of a "Goldilocks" planet.  I'd believe that the universe is teeming with life, but that the universe is so harsh, that each galaxy is probably life poor.  It probably gets started readily enough, but with so many potential disasters waiting to befall it, it probably doesn't last long enough to do much with it.  We, on the other hands, seem to be from current observations of extra-solar planets, to be an anomaly, with a small rocky and watery planet close to the sun with large gaseous planets out in the back yard patrolling and mopping up lots of the asteroids that would otherwise hit us.  Whereas most extra-solar planets we've found so far seem to have this reversed, with the big gas giants in close and the small rocks getting rockier out the back as the asteroids wham into them!  I think our solar system is back to front from the norm, and as a result life has been able to get more advanced than just microbes.
Alison

In the more common solar system you describe, Alison, it seems likely that life would tend to form on the moons of those large inner planets.

It will be interesting if and when we do find another. Goldilocks planet. We might need to observe millions of stars before we do. Do we send a probe that will take hundreds or thousands of years to reach it? And, at least, decades again to transmit pictures and data back to Earth?

Interesting, thats a nice possibility.

According to Hindu myths the big bang is somewhat equivalent to Brahma (the creative force/god) opening his eyes, and when he closes his eyes the universe "sleeps", then he opens them again and starts the cycle all over. BUT, there are apparently many Brahmas all doing this in different places all the time which implies a multitude of universes existing on different planes, in different stages of creation.

Although its a myth, its entirely possible, and there may be many other goldilocks planets out there...just very, VERY rare, and even if they are close by, we may not be able to perceive them due to optical illusions (created by bending light and matter) or by the fact that they may exist on a separate plane with different rules (about mass and energy, etc). If we tried to move to their plane, our particles (which adhere to different rules) may self combust, collapse, dissolve, or do anything!

Many myths do explain that there are Star people who may exist not as physical bodies... I am of the opinion that thoughts are a type of energy yet to be explored. Just think about how our thoughts can change the chemistry of our bodies (emotions, stress, excitement, lust)-- they must be a force exerting some sort of influence over our neurons and directing them about. If they are a force, whats to stop them from exerting influence outside of the body. It could be that they create auras, etc. If so, perhaps Star people exist as thought energy bouncing about the universe, giving us dreams and acting as "muses".

Just thinking out loud...

Earths ocean is the final frontier. We know less about it.

This seems highly relevant
http://youtu.be/9CIW00U2SZg

But we can go there. We can now travel to the deepest depths of the ocean even if we are only humble movie directors like James Cameron.

(words to intro are still running thru my mind... boldly go... etc., )

The brain is the final frontier we know so little about it...

Okay then, space is the final physical frontier. There are greater frontiers in terms of knowledge.

Quantum physics is the real final frontier. We know less about really tiny stuff than we know about really big stuff.

I think some of the information out there is really misleading. When the aliens come to attack, I highly doubt they'll do it by slowly descending while moving back and forth.

^ LMAO!! XD

Actually, finding out how all these frontiers are related is the real final frontier.

Can I just exclaim- I WISH THERE WAS A SCHOOL RUN BY ASPIES SO THEN MAYBE WE COULD share ideas, rely on each other (rather than gov't and corporations) to explore frontiers, and we'd all be gay!   ..........(happy).

This post was last modified: 05-17-2012 06:34 AM by sg1008.