[meteorite-list] Contact! - OT - ish

From: mark ford <markf_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Feb 2 04:17:48 2006
Message-ID: <6CE3EEEFE92F4B4085B0E086B2941B3145BAC0_at_s-southern01.s-southern.com>

Hi Sterling,

 - Firstly, thanks for a very enjoyable post!

I have noticed a trend over the years for the Value of N to become lower
and lower, when it was first talked about we should have ET practically
on Mars, but now we are down to a few maybee's in our galaxy if at all.
(don't get me started on the pathetic pointless search for life on Mars!
grrr)

Monkeys are notoriously unpredictable creatures, so might as well insert
a (+/- rnd * 1000) statement into the equation, in fact intelligent life
is probably the most broad sweeping variable in the whole equation,
what's interesting is it only takes a tiny tiny change in DNA for a
human to be a 1ft hairy Lemur that hangs from a tree all day and have
trouble peeling a banana, let alone develop language, build electronic
circuits construct transmitters (and vice versa of course). As the
comedian Harry Hill would say "what are the chances of that happening
ay?"

I too think the whole Seti movement is now clutching at straws, the way
the whole of science is going at the moment concerns me greatly, more
and more people appear to be starting off with what they want to find
and desperately looking for some half facts to fit, a very bad way to do
science, big mistakes happen that way, (as I said don't get me started
on the Life/Mars thing!)

I do think once exo-planet hunting has decent spectroscopy/optical
imaging capability, we might start finding interesting things, right now
we don't even have a proper photo or map of the surface of Mercury let
alone looking for a forest 10,000 light years away!!!

Mark
Received on Thu 02 Feb 2006 04:21:05 AM PST