Newsgroups: sci.space Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Why no aliens Message-ID: <1988Aug30.160801.3074@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <2826@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Date: Tue, 30 Aug 88 16:08:01 GMT In article <2826@pt.cs.cmu.edu> dep@cat.cmu.edu (David Pugh) writes: >You may be half right, though -- it may be the case that any race "advanced" >enough to make contact over interstellar distances always ends up destroying >itself (either with nukes or something worse). Suppose, for example, that it >is possible to build a weapon that would kill everyone on the planet... Could be done now, probably, if one of the superpowers wanted to spend enough money and effort on it. >... something like this may happen in the next 20 years ... Don't forget that if things had happened differently, we might already have a small lunar colony. Based on our own experience, it would seem that a species acquires space travel and planetary-sterilization capability at about the same time, so it's anybody's guess which would become a major factor in species survival first. This isn't very satisfactory as a *universal* explanation for the lack of visitors. -- Intel CPUs are not defective, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology they just act that way. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu