William T Goodall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1993006,00.html > > "So much space, so little time: why aliens haven't found us yet > > > Ian Sample, science correspondent > Thursday January 18, 2007 > The Guardian > > It ranks among the most enduring mysteries of the cosmos. Physicists > call it the Fermi paradox after the Italian Nobel laureate Enrico > Fermi, who, in 1950, pointed out the glaring conflict between > predictions that life was elsewhere in the universe - and the > conspicuous lack of aliens who have come to visit. > > Now a Danish researcher believes he may have solved the paradox. > Extra-terrestrials have yet to find us because they haven't had > enough time to look. > > Using a computer simulation of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, Rasmus > Bjork, a physicist at the Niels Bohr institute in Copenhagen, > proposed that a single civilisation might build eight intergalactic > probes and launch them on missions to search for life. Once on their > way each probe would send out eight more mini-probes, which would > head for the nearest stars and look for habitable planets. .... > > -- > William T Goodall
This seems way too pessimistic, or I'm missing something. If there are only 8^2 probes (each one builds 8 more, and the making stops there), that might make sense, but if each probe can make another 8 - which the article doesn't seem to clearly specify either way - then it doesn't take too many generations before the limit is something more reasonable like how long it takes to cross the galaxy: at ~100,000 light-years in diameter, and travelling at .10 c, one would expect to see visitors within one or 2 million years of the first batch of replicators sent out. --Gwern -- Inquiring minds want to know. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
