From: gvb@TEFS1.acd.com (Gregg Brown)
Subject: Re: more whittley streiber, 7731. Read 'So much rom..'
Organization: Applied Computing Devices, Inc., Terre Haute IN
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 18:10:48 GMT

In article <14671@mindlink.bc.ca> Jeremy_Reimer@mindlink.bc.ca (Jeremy Reimer) writes:
>> 
>> Dear oh dear oh dear...Who's being picking posts at random?
>> Humans=evidence of sentient life in universe.
>> Only one hell of a conceited bastard thinks that all the life in the entire
>> unverse can be found in a thin layer of crap on the outside of a liquid steel
>> ball.
>
>
>All right, to pick a post at random...
>
>Why exactly does the realization that there must be other life in the universe
>mean that this life MUST be visiting here?
>
>I understand humans=evidence of sentient life in universe.
>I understand sentient life on Earth=probably sentient life elsewhere
>I DON'T understand sentient life elsewhere=goofy grey aliens who cross the
>millions of light years to get to Earth, only to make some crop circles,
>mutilate a few cattle, and abduct a few people who were mentally unstable
>anyway.
>
>It's a BIG universe, folks.  What makes you think the aliens have any interest
>in the Earth?  What makes you think they've even FOUND it?  Forget trivial
>things like the light barrier, how about the sheer number of stars in a single
>Galaxy?  How do you fit in visits to 100 billion stars on your interstellar
>journey, trying to find one that has semi-intelligent life?  Our TV and radio
>signals have only had a change to traverse a sphere of a radius of 60 light
>years or so.  That's a tiny fraction of the galaxy.  Why do we think that
>humans are so important that they deserve any alien's full attention?  Unless
>they have monitoring stations every 50 light-years apart throughout the entire
>galaxy, they wouldn't even know we are HERE!
>
>
>--
>Jeremy_Reimer@ |"Anti-ninjas were the most feared assassins in the world.
>mindlink.bc.ca | Instead of appearing out of thin air, throwing metal stars
>---------------| and messing around with bo staffs and numchuks they simply
>aka THE JAGUAR!| shot people and then drove everyone mad with pointless
>---------------| conspiracy theories for years afterwards."
>Stealth Sig#42 |  --From "N-Man #3"

You mention that there are 100 billion star system in our galaxy. Some 
estimate 400 billion. I will use an average of 250 billion to base
my calculations on. 

Bear in mind that if aliens were, like us, looking for life in other star
systems they would have a tremendous job ahead of them. If you knew what to
listen for as far as RF radiation, your job would be much easier. But, if
you are just looking, like with optic base tools, your job is almost
impossible. 

If you were examining, say, 100 individial systems a day it would take
you (based on 250 million star systems) about 684,931.5 years to examine
them all. Now, if there is only one other detectable life form, it would
probably only take you 1/4 that long using some kind of educated guess
about where to concentrate your search. This would work out work out to be 
171,232.9 years. You would be overcomplementing me if you said these were 
the roughest of estimations. They are the roughest of the roughest. Anyway
you look at it, it could take you a long, long, LLLLLLooooooNNNNNNggggg 
time to find life. However, many factors that play into this are:
Everything we are looking at, according to present theories,  is old.
Minimum, 4 years, maximin of many thousands. Another factor may be that
aliens have *BEEN* looking for us for 684,931.5 years and found us. I
would imagine that a species, as they become more technically advanced,
would also be able to search faster and more reliably. So, maybe
we have been found, maybe not. 

My point is, its a big universe and even if we stuck out like a dayglow
orange ball in a pile of black ones, it would still take a long time to see us.
Kinda like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of the sun. 

Gregg.
-- 
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