(August 10, 2016 at 9:05 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:Stimbo Wrote:We don't need to look that far out. Our Galaxy 'only' has a span of around 100,000 ly, which is still a hell of a walk. Millions of lightyears gets us out to our nearest large galactic neighbour, M31 at 2.2 million. There are about two thousand stars within 50 ly of Earth, about 15% of which could have planets with the proper conditions to qualify as life-sustaining., and about a dozen such potentials have been discovered. There could be tens of 'billions' (hate that term) in our Galaxy alone. No rush to go so far from home just yet.
I suspect that there's a big disconnect between the odds of 'can have life' and 'can have civilization'.
Oh, obviously. From our point of view, at best we're only tooled up to discover the first of the two. That reduces the possible number of targets on which we need to expend time looking for the second.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
