I totally agree with Dave about the possibility of aliens on Earth, and besides, them being so strange as to communicate with somebody in particular and not everybody. Notice how UFOs sightings have decreased in last years, even when you can get videos on anything because of the ubicuity of cheap cameras.DaveKillens wrote:But to assume that some scientifically advanced species takes all the time and trouble to travel many parsecs to visit this planet stretches intelligent thought. Not only that, but to work hard in maintaining secrecy from the general population, while giving most they encounter anal probes sort of gives this story a bit of foolishness.
The truth is that we're a very small planet on a very dull solar system, tucked away in a very remote arm of an average galaxy.
But as the Earth being in a dull solar system... all my arguments about the possibility of humans being the first intelligent race on the Galaxy revolves around the uniqueness of our planet (and, of course, I support my logic also on the failure of the SETI-Phoenix project to find radio sources in a large sphere, surveyed in the last 20 years, around the Earth, as I say before). Let me explain, please:
- The orbit of the sun around the Galaxy is pretty circular. It orbits the Galaxy every 700 million years and it has managed to avoid the areas close to the nucleus, that should "fry" life.
This is how the really dangerous galactic center will look tonight at Toronto, around 10 pm, according to Stellarium: it is right above the horizon, on the circle I put where the left hand of Sagitarius (the centaur at the center-right, bottom of the image) is grabbing his arch, Dave.
The red E and S marks the East and South. I give thanks for being able to watch it from a safe distance... 35.000 light years seem barely enough to me.
- The atmosphere of the Earth is such as to protect us from highly energetic gamma bursts when magnetars or supernovas explode, that can "fry" planets like Mars from as far away as 100 light-years.
- Our beloved Earth is extremely strong: it is basically a giant 4,000 kilometers indestructible iron ball, surrounded by a shell of silica 1,000 km deep. This means that it has developed a magnetic field that is unique in the rocky, inner planets of the solar system. The only thing that stops solar wind in Venus is its atmosphere.
- The possibility of unicellular life is certainly high: barely had the rocks of Earth cooled and it was full of life. I have a gneiss rock from the Great Slave Lake, from the Canada shield, so beloved to DaveKillens, that is one of the oldest known rocks. It has existed for over 3.800 million years.
The oldest fossils are 3.500 million years. I have an australian chert that contains them and that sits right besides my canadian gneiss (I love to collect rocks: civil engineer is about "rocking"!).
The strange thing about Earth is that it took 2.800 million years, an enormity of time, to go from the unicellular fossils of my rocks to the multicellular fossils of the Precambrian. Thus, the evolution from independent cells to coordinate cells is extremely rare and difficult to achieve!
For it to happen on an stable planet orbiting an stable sun, protected from energetic events and stabilized for such a long time, it is because certainly we have had a lot of luck! This change to "multicellularity" and the interchange of genes it promotes, gave rise to the "life explossion" of the Cambrian, and, incidently, to sex and love. Isn't that great?
I guess we weren't discussing it if we did not live in an apparently unique, blue-green emerald jewel that we call the Earth. Not a dull place for me...
