From: Bill St.Arnaud (bill.st.arnaud_at_canarie.ca)
Date: Tue Jun 07 2005 - 08:24:35 PDT
Has there ever been a Drake like equation on the probability of finding
archeological evidence of past intelligent beings on earth e.g, hominids ?
To my mind the search for hominids is similar to the search for ET. They
both would be unaware of our modern day existence as we exist in their
futures. So assuming they had no intent of directly sending a signal or
message to us, we can only discover their existence through archeological
techniques.
Given that we only recognized that humans are part of the hominid tree in
the last 100 years, and the first real evidence of hominids was only made 50
years ago, and most of the evidence is made up of small fragments of bone,
teeth, stone tools, etc, after years of research and excavation, then one
can only assume the search for ET will probably be considerably longer.
The lack of evidence of ET so far would be comparable to saying there were
no hominids, after spending 3 weeks digging up our back yard.
Bill
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-public_at_setileague.org [mailto:owner-public_at_setileague.org] On
> Behalf Of LARRY KLAES
> Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 10:53 AM
> To: public_at_setileague.org; fpspace_at_friends-partners.org
> Cc: bioastro_at_setileague.org
> Subject: SETI public: Galactic Gradients, Postbiological Evolution and the
> Apparent Failure of SETI
>
> Paper: astro-ph/0506110
> Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 14:10:44 GMT (77kb)
>
> Title: Galactic Gradients, Postbiological Evolution and the Apparent
> Failure
> of
> SETI
>
> Authors: Milan M. Cirkovic and Robert J. Bradbury
> Comments: 30 pages, 2 figures
> \\
>
> Motivated by recent developments impacting our view of Fermi's paradox
> (absence of extraterrestrials and their manifestations from our past light
> cone), we suggest a reassessment of the problem itself, as well as of
> strategies employed by SETI projects so far. The need for such
> reevaluation
> is
> fueled not only by the failure of searches thus far, but also by great
> advances
> recently made in astrophysics, astrobiology, computer science and future
> studies, which have remained largely ignored in SETI practice. As an
> example
> of
> the new approach, we consider the effects of the observed metallicity and
> temperature gradients in the Milky Way on the spatial distribution of
> hypothetical advanced extraterrestrial intelligent communities. While,
> obviously, properties of such communities and their sociological and
> technological preferences are entirely unknown, we assume that (1) they
> operate
> in agreement with the known laws of physics, and (2) that at some point
> they
> typically become motivated by a meta-principle embodying the central role
> of
> information-processing; a prototype of the latter is the recently
> suggested
> Intelligence Principle of Steven J. Dick. There are specific conclusions
> of
> practical interest to be drawn from coupling of these reasonable
> assumptions
> with the astrophysical and astrochemical structure of the Galaxy. In
> particular, we suggest that the outer regions of the Galactic disk are
> most
> likely locations for advanced SETI targets, and that intelligent
> communities
> will tend to migrate outward through the Galaxy as their capacities of
> information-processing increase, for both thermodynamical and
> astrochemical
> reasons. This can also be regarded as a possible generalization of the
> Galactic
> Habitable Zone, concept currently much investigated in astrobiology.
>
> \\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0506110 , 78kb)
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