For the past few days, i m quite fascinated by physicists and particularly the ones who study this universe. I was going through youtube videos of Stephen Hawking and many others who are researching quite deeply on few things - existence of other planets in our galaxy and other galaxies, the possibility of finding a planet that is Earth-like that is suitable for living, possibility of life in other planets (what we call alien) and researching the light from distant stars that exploded some thousand years back (it appears to us that it is happening currently as the star is at a distance of few thousands light years).I was simply inspired by the grand vision of astrophysicists who are finding a place in this universe where our future generations can lead a life. It is this vision that made those scientists to find an Earth-like Planet nearest to us at 20 light years from Earth. Yes, it is the nearest planet having conditions similar to that of Earth which is orbiting a star "Gliese 581". The planet is named as "Gliese 581g". More stories can be found here, here, here, here and here.
Also, a strong beam of radio signal consisting of messages has been sent and it is likely to be received in 2029. If there is an interesting/intelligent species there and if they send the response back (or take a flight and come here), we should receive it by 2049. What will happen if those species much more intelligent than us and already engineered a spacecraft that travels a lot faster than speed of light?
Being a software engineer, i just finding my own way to learn from astro-physics specifically about traveling against uncertainty.
Quite fascinating and it makes me to think whether i should buy a telescope :-)
