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Saturday, July 26, 2014

The Fermi Paradox and is Sunlight the Best Disinfectant?

Is that big glowing thing in the sky that makes life possible also the thing that will end life for us all? Ace notes that we might have had a near miss of a serious catastrophe. While not an ending all life on earth event, it is fair to say a wide spread loss of electricity for any appreciable length of time would be bad (read S.M. Sterling's Dies The Fire for what could likely result).  There have been a few articles and posts recently mentioning the Fermi Paradox. If there are billions of galaxies, each with billions of planets, why haven't we found evidence of intelligent life in the universe (or for that matter any life, yet, other than earth)?  Of course, a lot of that is due to us.  We have not done enough exploration in this solar system, let alone beyond it, to know. But then again, would finding simple life on Mars or Europa be a good thing? Maybe not.

Or maybe those intelligent beings out there are just ignoring us because we are too primitive... (they might even have the same prime directive as in Star Trek)

It was not the best movie ever, but it did address the what if of a really catastrophic corneal eruption from the sun:



Update:
This threat is very real (but there is not a lot to do about it, other than expand out from Earth and spread the seeds of humanity)

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