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Unread 26-07-2005, 10:05
KenWittlief KenWittlief is offline
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Re: are we alone in the universe?

Quote:
Originally Posted by sciguy125
How about this:

We've concluded that the probability of life starting in the first place is obscenely low. We know for a fact that it has happened at least once though. What if it happened ONLY once? Not necessarily here though.

I could accept the idea of life spreading from one planet to another within the same solar systems, organic material being blasted off one planet, frozen in space, and managing to land on another planet and carry on there.

But I find that much less likely to happen between star systems, where the nearest inhabitable star/planet might be 20 or 50 light years away. For life to be moved from one star system to another by natural forces, the time involved would be tens of thousands of years in transit, and the acceleration required to obtain those speeds would shred the cells.

But if intelligent life is colonizing the galaxy, with sub-light speed space craft, then studies have shown our entire galaxy could be colonized in about 2 million years.

Which is another argument for a lifeless galaxy/universe. The galaxy is 16 billion years old. If it only take 2 million years (0.0125%) to colonize the galaxy then, where are they? Where are the other colonies and why are we not in contact with them? Every inhabitable planet in the galaxy should be colonized by now.
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