Imagine if it was permanently cloudy

Just a thought, inspired by a documentary I've just seen on the box, about the stars.

Imagine if earth's atmosphere was permanently cloudy everywhere.

Our entire evolution, culture and everything would be radically different. If our ancestors had never been able to see the stars, how would they know to wonder about them, and try to study the sky.

Think of all the technology we take for granted that wouldn't have came into being if there was that one minor difference.

Still, at least the weather forecasts would be more accurate

I do sometimes wonder if just as we think we know everything there is, if say a fish things the universe is just everything that's in the sea.

 

Good point Dave

There was an explosion at Galactic Central point that was picked up this week, we wouldn't have seen that in the fog.

 

There's always an enquiring mind somewhere though, assuming we had developed intelligence still someone would have had the ambition to see what was above those clouds surely, or even see if you could get above them. All you'd have to do afterall is climb a high mountain!

 

It feels like it's been foggy in Sussex for most of the week. Foggy and damp.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of if our atmosphere was, in general, clouds. So that hardly any visible light got down to the surface (like daytime in when a storm is brewing, black clouds but permanently and everywhere you looked from the ground).

Think of it like this. People have studied the stars for as long as we know, and that's produced some good solid science that's trickled its way down to everyday technology. SatNav, mobile phones, the internet, none of it would have happened if people hadn't spent millenia working out the shape of the solar system and the universe beyond, and worked out the basics of what's going on up there and how to exploit it. If you consider by comparison how long we've known about radio waves, electrons, photons, etc and all the other stuff we now know is there but is not visible to all, what we talking? Maybe 100 years, compared to maybe 10,000 years or more? Much more recently still, scientists have been looking deeper into the subatomic nature of stuff and the possibility that the rules change at that level (It was less than 25 years ago that I was taught that an electron is most definitely a particle, now we know it is most definitely a particle and its most definitely a wave, and its both and its neither).

So, much of our science has origins in millenia of study by ordinary people with enquiring minds who could see the stars and the moon and the sun and watch how they moved and hypothesise etc. If they never had that opportunity, even if they still had the same level of curiosity and intellect, I reckon now we'd still have some science, but the general view would probably still be that the earth is flat, and the idea of anything beyond earth would be as radical as the current suggestions from the science world that there might be stuff parallel to or beyond our universe.

 

Interesting point Clueless. My guess is that science would have eventually worked out what lies beyond the earth by developing ways to measure and explain phenomena such as day and night, temperature changes, seasons, tides and so on.

It is possible to demonstrate the existence of something without actually being able to see it. For example, astronomers have discovered planets orbiting distant stars by measuring the minute variations in the light emitted from those stars caused by the orbiting planet transiting the star. It is not possible to actually see these planets, but their existence has been demonstrated.

Interesting also to speculate on how plant life would have evolved to cope with permanent cloud.
Presumably, many plants would evolve larger leaves to collect more of the available light. Or possibly plants would simply grow more slowly, which in turn would affect insect and animal life, as less food would be available at the start of the food chain.

Balanced against this, however would be the fact that constant cloud cover would reduce the variation between day and night temperatures, which would make conditions more favourable for plant growth.

This thread has really got my brain working now, just when I was winding down for the weekend too. Thanks Clueless!

 

Source : Wikipedia

 

Well Leonardo da Vinci He may have got high enough in his Helio Co Peter
to see the light :-)

Jack McH