I wonder..

I wonder what intelligent life on Europa/Ganymede would develop for technology, since electricity would be impossible.. Would they use bioengineering? What would they think about the universe, having a sky made of miles of solid ice? Would they, reasonably, believe that the universe is their ocean and nothing more, or would they be the type to question if there was an end to the shell?

 I wonder what it would be like to be launched perpendicular to the plane of rotation of the solar system (not toward the outer planets, but straight up or down from them). I wonder how far you would have to travel to be able to see the whole Milky Way, to see where we actually are in our galaxy. I wonder what it would look like from there; similar to Andromeda, or perhaps one of the farther-off galaxies. I wonder how accurate we are about our estimations, and I wonder what we haven't discovered about them yet.

I bet if everyone learned one new skill every month/week, the whole world would work a lot more smoothly, even if most of the skills people learn are bizarre and pointless. It's quite surprising how useful one area of knowledge is for something entirely separate. I'd also be willing to bet that, if everyone had a variety of interesting skills, it would not only be easier to connect with other people, it would also encourage people to use their skills to help others. What's the point of learning to do something if you don't share it, after all.

I wonder what northern forests looked like before the introduction of worms (worms are not native to areas that experienced glaciers during the ice age, when all of the topsoil -and thus, worms- was pushed south) I am curious as to the diversity that was lost in just that one simple introduction. If something so small and seemingly insignificant can have so great an impact, imagine the huge changes we make, and what that must do.

I am insanely curious as to how the mechanism for evolution actually works. As far as I'm aware, nobody has a really good answer for that yet, although there are a lot of speculative answers which seem plausible. It makes such a fantastically huge difference to literally everything we value, if not the process, at least the end result, and yet we don't have a terribly good answer for why. I love those situations!

I sometimes look up at the sky, and marvel that somewhere in the universe, on some distant planet or moon, there is some sort of being, looking back in my direction, and marveling about the same thing. Statistically speaking, this is a likely scenario, since there are hundreds of billions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each, and most stars have at least a couple of planets, at least from what we have discovered so far, and many have dozens. If there are, as astronomers like to say, more stars in the known universe (what we can see in a sphere going out 13.8 billion light years; we can see a diameter of 29 billion light years, but the whole universe has a diameter around 92 billion light years http://www.space.com/24073-how-big-is-the-universe.html ) than grains of sand on the earth (who did the math for that is unknown to me, but I assume someone did at some point, just for funsies), that means there are 10 times as many planets. That's such a huge number, it's actually impossible to relate to for our puny species. most people have difficulty envisioning more than a thousand of an item, at most. Count the grains of sand in a handful some time. Make it a small handful, trust me.

What would it be like to be, say, a spider, with 16 eyes, or a mantis shrimp that has 16 color-receptor cone varieties to our 3 (basically, they can see a lot more of the electromagnetic spectrum than we can). What would it be like to navigate at high speeds in complete darkness, relying on sound for navigation like a bat, or use the magnetic field lines of the earth for directions like migratory birds? Or even the fine-tuned machine that is the housecat, who's sense of motion detection is superb, and who has a dedicated part of the visual processing portion of the brain dedicated to whisker input? What would it be like to not be human, just for a while?

How different would the world be if we could convey our actual meaning rather than have it filtered by the recipient and misinterpreted? Would people be nicer if they knew everyone else was just trying to do their best and be nice? Would we get less hung up on word choice, and focus more on context?

If Homo sapiens sapiens hadn't evolved to intelligence (defined here as the ability to make sweeping changes to the environment, survive in nearly any conditions given time to prepare, and the capacity to problem solve to get a desired outcome), nor any other hominid race, what is the most likely animal to have done so in out stead? The squid, with it's amazing abilities to manipulate objects, survive out of water, and ridiculous intelligence/ability to learn without being taught? Perhaps the crow, able to figure out complicated multi-step puzzles, use the tools made by other species (dropping nuts in the road to be cracked by cars, then waiting for the walk sign to collect), and the ability to learn ridiculously quickly? Perhaps some other species entirely. What would that have looked like?

Where would our species be, technologically and socially, if we hadn't had as many setbacks as we did throughout history? What if the Library of Alexandria hadn't burned, or if the technology in the Antikythera Mechanism hadn't been lost and not reinvented for hundreds of years? What if the advanced cultures of ancient times hadn't collapsed/been annihilated, but continued to modernity? What if there weren't groups of people throughout history who tried to squash scientific progress and understanding, but had instead.. helped..?

I wonder how long it will be before knowledge and wisdom are again valued in modern society as they were in the past. We have the internet, and that means all information, both factual and otherwise, are readily available. At some point, then, we will hit a wall. We will hit a point beyond which society collectively decides it's tired of having so much false information, and demands a higher standard of information, especially from trusted figureheads such as the news and politicians. Someday we will reach a point when the words "I don't know, but that's a good question, and we should find out." will be respected and valued as an opening to further information, rather than an admission of ignorance.