What's that all about then?

Attenborough's retrospective programme the other day was a lot about evolution. He referred to the fact that in the biochemical soup of the Yellowstone geysers (shot of murky bubbling pool) there are unicellular organisms which are similar to the ones that started it all off. Is there evidence that these organisms are in a process of evolving? And why are so many of the creatures and plants farther back in the evolutionary tree still around? Why is one tree shrew still a tree shrew and another evolved? And the coelacanth? Really want to know!

I have stong suspicions that my sister is from another planet, in another universe.

I think physicists say that the question what came before the Big Bang has no meaning because there isn't a before the Big Bang. I know – it's hard to get the head round.

That's what physicists are trying to work out, flick. Meanwhile, the answer is "dunno". I'm happy with that.

Depends if you believe in God. If you do then God was there and if you don't then nothing was there. I don't know how the Big Bang happened.

What came before the Big Bang?

Should have added a [cold-blooded-mathematical-approach emoticon]

We know very little about the universe. I came across some probability talk ages ago (sorry, can't remember where) which said that the universe is SO HUGE that there is a high probability of there being life elsewhere in it. But it is also SO HUGE that there are innumerable places where the existence of life is not at all likely (low to zero probability). So far we've only come across those places. But we haven't been able to look very far yet. We're only apes with limited brain power and limited technology, so that isn't even the teeniest bit surprising.

But don't foget we only know limited stuff about our own galaxy, there could well be other entire galaxies out there that we are just not aware of.

Although, I would agree that if we haven't found them yet, or they us, for that matter then the likelihood does somewhat diminish.