From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4@msn.com)
Date: Tue Jul 23 2002 - 10:09:12 PDT
And if we assume that many life forms evolved on Earth-type
worlds, a recent study suggests that:
"three quarters of the Earth-like planets in the Universe are older than
the Earth and their average age is 1.8 (plus or minus 0.9) billion years
older than the Earth."
Two billion years ago, the most advanced form of life on Earth
were algae. Imagine what a planet with such a head start over
our world could produce!
Relevant articles:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/early-earth-01e.html
http://www.arn.org/docs/news/lookingforET031501.htm
This URL contains a link to the actual paper:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/SCHOOL_INFORMATION/MEDIA_ROOM/life_forms_2001.html
Larry
----- Original Message -----
From: Richard Burke-Ward
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 5:25 AM
To: Public SETI List
Subject: Re: SETI public: Jill Tarter on the Fermi Paradox
>> Does the SETI Institute have a formal position on the Fermi Paradox or not?
>> Isn't a robotic probe by the SETI Institute's definition a UFO? If not, why
>> the sudden interest in robotic probes, when we've been told they can't get
>> here?
I suspect they envisage robotic probes adrift in orbit, on the moon,
monoliths around Jupiter, probes out at 50 AU to use the sun as a radio
lens... But anything closer than 10,000 miles to Earth counts as UFO not a
probe – and therefore can’t exist!
In other words, I suspect that the Institute, if pushed, would have a
definition of probes that fits close to the mould of what we know we might
make in the near future – observing, not intervening; remote sensing, not
deploying sub-units for exploration (or whatever); mechanical, not
quasi-biological (but, IMO, everything is a ‘machine’ – just made with
different chemicals); intelligent the way a computer is intelligent – ie,
programmed – not autonomous or quasi-sentient. I may be doing them an
injustice, but I suspect that for the ‘probe’ = ‘robot’ - a definition that
allows them to claim a clear conceptual gulf between ‘probe’ and ‘UFO’.
Their sensitivity to this issue is understandable.
For my money, though, once you admit that probes are a possibility (and I’m
delighted that Jill T has), it’s a lot harder simply to dismiss all UFO
anecdotes as illusions or delusions – because you have admitted the
*possibility* that some small fraction of 'sightings' may contain an element
of truth. Think what kinds of machine we may be able to manufacture in 1,000
years' time... Or 1,000,000... Or more... Even if we accept that a probe got
here the slow way - travelling at, say, 0.1c, self-replicating at star
systems, spreading copies - a few tens of millions of years would suffice to
get it here from anywhere in the galaxy. Add another million for the age of
the sending species... You're still talking trivial fractions of the
galaxy's lifetime: it's easy to believe that a species may have reached
sentience 10 million years before we did, there's nothing to say they
couldn't.
And that means that any probe that is here could display a range of
technologies and abilities from the level of not-much-better-than-Voyager to
something utterly inconceivable. Vast intelligence, ability to make any form
- organic or mechanical at will, remotely reading 'snapshots' of human
neural states... And there's no guarantee that it's internally logical
behaviour would seem remotely logical to us...
Sounds a little like the kind of entity that might just produce the
occasional UFO...
I don't claim UFOs are 'real' - just that, if we admit probes are a
possibility, we cannot then be sure that all UFOs are definitely *not* real.
Which is why, IMO, it's time for scientists to *research* the phenomenon
rather than dismiss it. Oh, *and* to look in orbit, on the Moon, round
Jupiter, etc...
Best wishes to you all,
Richard
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