X-Message-Number: 5548
Date: 07 Jan 96 09:00:14 EST
From: yvan Bozzonetti <>
Subject: RE:nightmares

In message #5540 Eric Watt Forste says:

(...)
>Now most of the "Where are they?" discussions I've seen *seem* to assume
>that life could have sprung up just about anytime since the beginning of
>the universe. But clearly, life could only have sprung up easily after the
>interstellar medium reached a certain level of richness in such elements as
>carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. And the stars that make these elements and
>release them to the interstellar medium are comparatively rare. I'd be very
>interested in seeing any competent astrophysicist's estimates of how
>metallicity of the interstellar medium (remember, astronomers call oxygen a
>"metal") has changed during the life of the universe.

Our galaxy is somewhere near 15 billions years old (even if some give only ten
billions years for the full Universe!). Most metal production seems to have
taken place in the first two-three billions years if we take into account what
we see at the edge of observable Universe. That is, a Sun-like star could have
been 5 billions years old when our Sun was condensing out of interstellar gas
and dust. As an example, the star 51-Pegasus (where a Jupiter-like object has
been found in a 4 days orbit) is a Sun-like star formed 8 billions years ago.

The Sun is not the first star of its kind (nor the last!). There has been may be
one billion stars similar to it and older than it before. If any of them could
have seen a technological civilization on one of its planet, it would have
dominated the entire Galaxy long before our first jump in space.

Because we don't see that, I think the Ettinger's explanation is the best at
hand: We are incredibly lucky.

Another possibility yet, I have never seen elswhere:


Some time in the future, the Earth's rullers will use time travel to destroy any
other start-up in the Galaxy, so that there is no more concurence. May be most
of the observable Universe is dominated by hell. We don't undergo it because we
are the hell's rullers ancestors. This is a nightmare's tread it isn't?

		Yvan Bozzonetti.

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