Doug: I'm not sure if we're on the same page. Let me be as simple as possible.
Because I had earlier belonged to the Sagan school of Billions being Important, I had assumed the possibility of life was pretty much spread over the era of galaxy formation. But after being a bit more analytic, it occurred to me that one could reduce one of the billions .. the percent of the life of the universe w/in life formation might occur .. by a considerable amount. What I found interesting was that (considering star generations of import) that all life may be starting at about the same time .. w/in a billion or two years of each other. Does that make sense? You keep blinding me with science and billions, about which I am already aware. I'm interested in a different phenomenon .. adding stellar evolution (and why would you presume I don't understand evolution, of all things) and using that to be a bit more intelligent about boundary conditions. I think the answer is: You don't care about trimming the era of life formation from 12BY say, to 2-4BY. Right? -- Owen On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 7:16 PM, Douglas Roberts <[email protected]>wrote: > As to being the first, we've only been civilized, if you can call it that, > for a mere 5,000 years - the working definition for that descriptive being > the length of recorded history. Cripes, we've only existed as a unique > species for ~20,000 year. At the rate we're going, I'd place even money on > us no lasting another 20,000. > > So, given this, and the fact that there has been evolved multicellular, > animate life on the planet for the last ~500 million years, who can state > with authority that we are the first "intelligent" specie to evolve? > > Unless you don't believe in evolution... Oh wait, I guess we decided not > to go there. Back to our main program. > > Anyhow, 500 million years on a geological time scale > is sufficient for subduction to have completely > obliterated sizable portions of earthly real estate. Evidence of some > unfortunate prior specie's ephemeral 20,000 year claim to having become > civilized could well never be found by today's archaeologists. > > This is not a new concept, several science fiction writers have written > stories that transpire over geological time periods. Frederich Pohl, Larry > Niven, and more recently, Michael Seimsen who wrote *The Dig* which > addresses this very proposition. In his story, a hominid species rose to > approximately iron-age levels of technology ~120 million years ago, before > having been being wiped out in the Cretaceous era mass extinction. These > unfortunate individuals had a rough go of it, what with all the dinosaur > predators roaming around at the time (Sarah Palin would have *loved* this > story, presuming she could have gotten past the 6,000 year issue). As a > result of the relative hard times they were living in, these hominids did > not expand to the point of becoming a global blight, unlike the current > inhabitants. The did have art, though. > > On a much broader scale, we have what: 200 billion galaxies that we can > see, each with tens to hundreds of billions of > potentially habitable planets? I have a sneaky suspicion we are not the > first to have experienced "the quickening", universally speaking. > > --Doug > > On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]>wrote: > >> Gentle readers, as much as I like /.-like digressions, interesting humor >> (but not religious rants), has anyone anything to add to the idea that life >> origins may be bound to the era after Population II star formation? >> >> If so, we may be among the first of these very young life forms, +/- a >> billion years or so. >> >> -- Owen >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >> > > > > -- > Doug Roberts > [email protected] > [email protected] > http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins > <http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins> > 505-455-7333 - Office > 505-670-8195 - Cell > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
