History of Human Space Exploitation

Chapter 20
Every person who is alive now has thirty ghosts standing behind him, because since the beginning of human beings, the number of dead people is exactly thirty times that of the living people.About 1000 billion people have infested the planet Earth since the dawn of time.That number is interesting only because, by an odd coincidence, there also happen to be around 1000 billion stars in our own universe—the Milky Way.So in this universe, every person who has lived has a star shining in the sky.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" - One of the Greatest Science Fiction Writers of the [-]th Century: Arthur Clarke
According to Mr. Arthur Clark's calculation, the first year of the cosmic era, that is, 2600 AD, the number of human beings in the entire universe is about 570 billion. If calculated by 60 times, within the known space and time , a total of 27 trillion people have ever existed.Since Mr. Clark lived at the end of the twentieth century, the total population on the earth was about [-] billion, so some corrections need to be made if [-] times the number is used to nest the population of the [-]th century.

Combining the impact of technological growth on the fertility rate from the 22nd to the 27th century, after revision, it can be concluded that from the 27th century, when Homo sapiens began to pick up branches as weapons for self-defense and attack, the earth, or the entire human race In the accessible universe, there are about [-] trillion individuals in total, which are divided into Chordate, Mammalia, Primate, Hominidae, and Homo.

If we start from 20 years ago, that is, the second interglacial period of the Pleistocene, when Homo sapiens began to go to every corner of the earth and gradually developed distinctive civilizations, human beings have been constantly seeking knowledge in their own ways, and constantly trying to use their own All the knowledge you have to understand and explain this world, this universe.For example, when ancient people explained "fire", which can make raw meat cooked and become more easily absorbed by the digestive system, gods such as Zhu Rong, Prometheus, Hephaestus, and Argeny , to be created, imagined, endowed.

Later, when people looked up at the sky and hoped that the sun, the moon and the stars could give some hints and guidance to their actions, astrology with its own characteristics in various civilizations in the world was created and invented. Astrological system.

If we take the Western astrology that has been further improved in the early 21st century as an example, this system combines the planetary astrology system: a star in the solar system, that is, the sun, seven planets except the earth, and a dwarf planet, that is, Pluto. run track.Plus the constellation system, that is, the twelve constellations on the celestial sphere swept by the earth on the plane of revolution around the sun, that is, the ecliptic plane.The two systems complement each other to form a self-explanatory interpretation system.

In this astrology system, the planetary astrology system includes ten phases of the sun, Mercury, Venus, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, and the constellation system includes Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces.People usually draw or arrange an astrolabe for a person based on the absolute positions of the above-mentioned stars, planets, dwarf planets and constellations, centered on the earth, at the time of a person's birth.Usually, concepts such as "ascendant", "descendant", "zenith" and "nadir" constellations are defined by the area where the sun or a certain planet is exactly in a certain constellation in the visual direction at this time.

From a statistical point of view, if the ten stars, planets and dwarf planets in the solar system are used as the basic aspects, and each celestial body in the solar system will be in a different zodiac constellation at different times, then the total arrangement and combination possibility is: Twelve to the tenth power, that is, a result of the order of one billion.On this basis, plus the included angle of the line connecting the celestial bodies in the solar system with the earth as the center, if 0° (conjunction), 60° (sextile), 90° (square), 120° (triangle) split phase), 180° (opposite phase), 30° (dodecagon), 45° (octacle), 135° (complementary octagon), 150° (complementary dodecagon), 72° Eleven different special angles of (quintile phase) and 144° (double quintile phase) will also be included in the overall astrolabe arrangement.If the concept of angle phase is added, then the overall number of combinations will be ten to the 21st power, that is, the possibility of trillions of billions.

Compared with the total number of Homo sapiens in the universe or on the earth, which is only [-] trillion, the trillions and billions of possibilities included in the above-mentioned astrological system are enough to make every A human individual has its own "unique" astrological personality.

These are similar to the astrological systems developed with the earth as the center of the universe, as well as the ancient Chinese astrological systems and the ancient Indian astrological systems.The ancient Chinese astrology system is based on the Ziwei Doushu Xuxing School, which includes the Anmingshen Twelve Palaces, Qiyinshou, Dingnayin Five Elements Bureau, Anziweixing, Anyu Thirteen Main Stars, Anfuyao and Shensha Star System .Among them, it is worth mentioning the system of heavenly stems and earthly branches. According to current research, the heavenly stems originated from the counting of the ancestors in the Shang Dynasty or before, or the way of naming the body, recorded as A, B, C, D, E, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui units.The earthly branch system divides the 12-year period of Jupiter's revolution into twelve parts, which are represented by Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, and Hai.

After combining the decimal system of heavenly stems and the twelve binary system of earthly branches, it becomes the sexagesimal system of heavenly stems and earthly branches.This method combines the decimal system, which is convenient for intuitive calculation, and the twelve binary system, which is convenient for measuring the hour, day, and month. It is a very advanced counting and dating system for ancient ancestors.In another system including Taiji, Liangyi, Yinyang, Sixiang, Wuxing and 64 hexagrams, it uses six binary digits to represent the numbering system from zero to 63 in decimal.Among some implausible accounts circulating in early China is the claim that the inventor of the ancient electronic computer benefited greatly from the system.

Ancient Indian astrology includes systems such as Nakhatras, Rāi and Daās.Among them, the 27 constellations are based on dividing the 27 ​​degrees of the ecliptic cycle into 360 equal parts, each of which is 27°13', which corresponds to a constellation on the celestial sphere pointed to in Indian culture.The Nine Luminaries system is the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Rahu and Kedu, the celestial bodies and natural phenomena in the nine solar systems. Rahu and Kedu represent the ascending node and descending node of the orbit of the moon and the ecliptic, respectively.

The three typical ancient astrological systems mentioned above are all complex, but based on the results of celestial observation and understanding of nature by our ancestors.If understood in a statistical way, the order of magnitude of the permutations and combinations included in these astrological systems is all billions of billions, that is, ten to the sixteenth power or more.

Using the preceding pages to describe several astrological systems of ancient humans is by no means used to ridicule and despise the wisdom of the ancestors, but rather to sigh and admire. Since human beings began to have civilization, they have exhausted their own wisdom to analyze themselves. , explain the environment, and recognize the universe.When we look at these complex and huge astrological systems from the perspective of later generations, we can't help but compare them to the natural science systems built by humans based on various technical means and observation results.We will find that there may be gaps in age, cognitive scope and scientific means between the two, but there is no essential difference in the summarization and pursuit of knowledge itself.

From today's perspective, we cannot criticize the construction of an imperfect or even wrong knowledge system due to the lack of knowledge and cognitive scope.Take astronomy as an example. In the era of the earth-centered theory, the Gaitian theory, and the earth-hunting theory, these theories are indeed more ethereal than their mythological systems, and they can better explain the universe that people can perceive in that era.Even in the era when the heliocentric theory was just published by Copernicus, some important issues still could not be described more accurately than the geocentric theory under the heliocentric system, which led to the geocentric theory still occupying a dominant position until the Galileo era.

Human beings always like the new and dislike the old in their desire for cognition. When Galileo picked up the world's first astronomical telescope, he used more accurate observations and sophisticated mathematics to enable the heliocentric theory to explain more astronomical phenomena that people can see with the naked eye. The geocentric theory was completely abandoned.When Sir Isaac Newton introduced astronomical research with classical physics, and scientists gradually realized that the sun is not the center of the universe, the heliocentric theory was quickly abandoned.

Time has entered the nineteenth to twentieth century, the era of great scientific discoveries. Although the aperture of the telescope has increased dozens of times compared to the era when Galileo and Newton invented the refracting and Newtonian reflecting telescopes, astronomers also use large-aperture telescopes And photographic technology defined longer and more star catalogs. Until Edwin Hubble defined exogalaxies, human understanding of the universe still did not go beyond the scope of the Milky Way.At the same time, when Albert Einstein published the general theory of relativity, the universe was still considered static, and only a few years later, the publication of the Big Bang model and the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation made people understand the universe model Another quick update.

Later, dark matter and dark energy have been guessed, observed, defined, and can be applied today. They are still obtained in accordance with human desire for knowledge and the most vigorous impact on the boundaries of cognition.

Today's human beings have traveled to almost every corner of the Virgo supercluster of galaxies, which is only a drop in the ocean, through the star tunnel formed by the mechanism of dark matter and dark energy, but how can human beings stand at such a point in time? Today, which represents all historical events, scientific and technological discoveries, and the causal relationship caused by each individual and the whole in human history, how can we use the eyes of ignorance and superstition to examine the bits and pieces of past civilizations?

Since dark matter and dark energy began to be systematically studied in the 23rd and 24th centuries, the success of these cutting-edge researches was naturally used in the observation and exploration of cosmology.Under such a system, human beings' concept of the universe has expanded tens of thousands of times compared to the 21 billion light-year observable universe at the beginning of the 900st century, through the addition of dark matter and dark energy.In the case of more cognition, the universe has raised more questions for human beings at the same time: Can visible matter and dark matter be unified into more fundamental particles on a smaller scale?Perhaps after being able to return to this question, today's cognitive system and scientific theories will be updated and iterated faster.

Back to the topic of astrology, since ancient times, people hope to control themselves more and control the fate of the world.The material world is defined more and more accurately by natural science, and when it comes to the fate and future of human beings, it is often possible to use a parallel universe with a certain theoretical system of "natural science" within the scope of science or sociology. Discussions with social psychology, but such discussions have been naturally introduced into the category of metaphysics and philosophy for thousands of years.

In this era of ours, in an era when human beings can already gallop freely in the scale of supergalactic clusters, human beings still have not found a better way to predict their own destiny and future than those of astrology 4000 years ago.So far, a large number of people are still using those ancient metaphysical theories centered on the earth, guessing, hinting, and summarizing their past behavior and future destiny every day, every month, and every year.

I personally believe that the development of human beings, just like our understanding of nature, the universe, our own destiny and future, is based on fear and laziness.The fear of hunger makes humans constantly update their domestication technology for plants and animals, and the desire for laziness makes humans continue to invent machines and equipment that free their feet, hands, and more body organs.

As the nineteenth-century English writer Charles Dickens began his still-reprinted novel A Tale of Two Cities:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of faith, it was the epoch of doubt; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; This is the spring of hope, this is the winter of despair; our future has everything, our future has nothing; we are going to heaven, and we are going to hell.

The full text of this article is excerpted from the fourth part of "The History of Human Cosmos Development", the third part of "A Brief History of Human Civilization", and the relevant articles included in "Discussions".

(End of this chapter)