X-Message-Number: 11209
From: "John Clark" <>
Subject: ET's and Gamma Ray Bursters
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 10:42:33 -0500

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

It's probably just a bizarre natural phenomena of some sort, but I must admit
that when I first heard of Gamma Ray Bursters I thought of Robin Hanson's

excellent essay "The Great Filter"   http://hanson.berkeley.edu/greatfilter.html


Let me make it clear that my idea is almost certainly bullshit, but suppose, 
just
suppose nature is unkind. Suppose that in the technological history of any

civilization there will come a time when it will find hints of a new force in 
nature,

and suppose there is a very obvious experiment to investigate that possibility, 
and

suppose because it is so new there is not one scrap of information to think it 
is in
any way dangerous so the experiment is performed. And then BOOM, more energy

is released in 10 seconds than the sun has generated in its entire 5 billion 
year history.


It is of course difficult to predict how a newly discovered force in Physics 
will behave,

that's why it's new. Madam Curie was certainly not stupid, and when she first 
discovered

Radium she had not one scrap of information to think that the strange rays given
off
by that element were in any way dangerous, but it ended up killing her.


Well OK, Gamma Ray Bursters are probably not industrial accidents, but the idea 
might
make a good science fiction story.

  John K Clark     


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.5.5

iQA/AwUBNrXLaN+WG5eri0QzEQL05gCfYrqORZRqAklGxFLKPQwUH1hF0JwAn0xn
B9g1klc0cUzyjyUu9dx1KOIM
=QYv9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11209