(October 12, 2010 at 5:16 am)Chuck Wrote: The main idea is right, but the detail is not quite right. The sun may not be a giant, but it is probably above average in mass. The milky way is not a minor galaxy. It is the most massive body in the local cluster and would be far above average even in a supercluster.
IIRC there is a very high proportion of red dwarfs in the galaxy so indeed, we probably are above average. Perhaps he meant if you compare biggest with smallest then we are relatively small.
Still, the idea is nice, but one of the problems with it is that the religious types often can't (or unwilling) to really contemplate the size of the universe. Those that i know who can tend to be the more deist types rather than theist. The theist word view really doesn't fit in with the real size of the universe... but there again, not surprising when you consider it was invented back when people still thought that the earth was at the center of the universe and did not know stars were other suns.
You can forgive our ancestors who held these beliefs... its a bit hard to forgive those who willingly remain ignorant of what we know today.
A finite number of monkeys with a finite number of typewriters and a finite amount of time could eventually reproduce 4chan.
