Yes i agree NGC2736.
You have to think, would life on other planets be like us anyway.
What if space flight is not a necessary requirement in their development.
Would silicon based lifeforms even bother visiting an organic life form based planet. What of life that evolves in ammonia seas, it may still be intelligent but would see no need to interact with us.
There are too many variables imo to automatically surmise that if life is rife in the universe then it must visit us.

Going to look over the document anyway, should make fascinating reading. Well done Hal.

Seeing how large the universe is there is no way to guarantee or back up anything that has been stated here...The ability for life to have sprouted on any planet is infinite and unknown- We know there are other planets yet we've only seen just a few. Just because they appear to not sustain life doesn't mean that on other planets its the same. Human beings are only thousands of years old...you would think that there would easily have to be a species millions of years old- which would be far more advanced than anything we've read or seen in a movie or book. Why would they bother interacting? Well probably out of curiousity and hopefully if they are benevolent- for peace. I think your all shorting yourselves here...and if anyone disbelieves- then why waste time trying to debunk everyone else's beliefs? We are probably one of a kind- and barely scratching the surface of technological advances- anything thats flying around out there is flying out there all over because they've been around WAY longer than us.

Thanks Hal!

I've long been drawn to the Fermi Paradox, Drake equation, Von Newmann probes, etc.

Being able to read more details of that historic luncheon is fascinating.

Much appreciated.

[edit on 11/25/07 by makeitso]

I think this idea of our location in the Galactic arm of the Milky Way being 'out in the sticks' is erroneous.

As you get to closer to the Galactic center, what happens? Radiation goes up.

One of the biggest detriments to interstellar travel and of existence of relativel fragile, complex beings is the danger of cosmic, and solar radiation.

So I think we are actually in a 'prime real estate' location, or 'sweet spot' where incident radiation is fairly low. (likewise, the location of our orbit being 93 million miles from the Sun means lower solar radiation than the inner planets, but not so far that we don't have enough heat and light to sustain life).

In addition the other problem of being closer to the denser Galactic center is the danger of comets and asteroids which would be presumably more numerous. So the likelyhood of catastrophy would be much higher due to collisions and large impacts

So I think this idea that there are potentially lots of civilizations the closer you get to the galactic core has not been well thought out - even, surprisingly, by the august Dr Teller:

"I do not believe that much came of this conversation, except perhaps a statement that the distance to the next location of living beings may be very great and that, indeed, as far as our galaxy is concerned we are living somewhere in the sticks, far removed from the metopolitan area of the galactic center" - Edward Teller

When you take this to the logical conclusion, there may actually be a fairly narrow band of galactic space where the risk of collisions and impacts is lower, and the amount of radiation is not high. It's basically a situation where we are in one of a few areas of oasis in a vast, and hostile galactic desert.

[edit on 25-11-2007 by Badge01]

The brain power at that particular luncheon was mind blowing...

Indeed, where is everybody? Not that I doubt there is life out there in the Universe other than ourselves, if they are advanced enough to be visiting us now, where are the older signals that would tell us that they were like us once...

I realize that the Universe is vast beyond any sort of easy comprehension, but shouldn't we have heard something, other than ambiguous signals that really could be anything?

It is believed by astrophysicists that the center of the galaxy is probably not very hospitable to life despite the greater density of stars.

The stars there are from an "older generation" and so have generated much less heavy elements to make planets, and also the radiation from one another is likely to be quite disruptive to whatever planets are there.

It is possible to answer Fermi's question of "where are they" with "they came here and didn't find anybody worth talking with and left" (e.g. 100,000 years ago).

My real question is, "why don't we hear them?" If there were even the hint of a galactic civilization which takes off anywhere the radio frequencies should be buzzing with them. They may use some other magic communication as well, but EM is much too useful to ignore. We shoudl be able to hear their backscatter and crap.

We should have discovered ETs when we first turned on a radio telescope. We didn't.

Is there any value to meeting truly strange non-terrestrials?

Lol of course there is. Why would scientists look for ET bacteria? It's not like we can sit down for tea with the bacteria.

As for your theory about the center of the galaxy having more radiation, it's interesting in that it ties into the whole hypothesis that: aliens live underground because they are very sensitive to radiation. Perhaps they were like us many many years ago and after generations of flying around in space became a radiation plagued sickly species?? Perhaps the Earth is an oasis. And living underground is the "sweetest spot" in their view. They certainly don't seem interested in taking our real estate. *phew*



edit: spelling

[edit on 7-8-2008 by Scramjet76]