milky way stuffed with alien worlds...

[Peter Lemkin]

http://news.discovery.com/space/milky-wa...orlds.html

Back in my youth, when dinosaurs were still seen on the Boulder, CO mall, I took a very informative course in astrophysics entitled ' Intelligent Life In The Universe'. For our final paper, we had to do an independent calculation of the number of Intelligent lifeforms in the visible universe [smaller then than now, but far!]. My calculations, which I'd still support for that 'smaller' know universe were about one million. Perhaps, with the Universe know now to be larger it would be more like ten to a hundred million. The numbers of non-'intelligent' life forms would be perhaps 100 times that - maybe a 1000 times that. Most life-forming planets and bodies do NOT develop 'intelligent' civilizations [it is debatable if our Planet even is one of those...but that is another long discussion....!] IF [big IF!, we humans are 'intelligent' we are dwarfed in the number of years of that state compared to almost all others.....in the lowest 1%, at maximum..i.e. those other intelligent civilizations have had technology for hundreds of thousands or years to hundreds of millions of years...where we have had technology for about 5,000 years max. and more like the last 500 years, or less. We are infants in this BIG Universe, at best and very arrogant in our naiveté. [Judging from what I see of how homo sapiens sapiens have conducted themselves since 'intelligence' began, I'd say we are not only babies, but retarded and likely to self-destruct [as have MOST intelligent civilizations]. Only those who do not engage in Wars and Exploitation survive for long. We do NOT seem [sadly] to be on that path...let us hope those of us NOT in power, can turn things around....