mike_mccue
drewfx1
SteveStrummerUK
mike_mccue
I heard a presentation recently that pointed out that, when you consider the age of the universe and our planet, the amount of time it took for life to appear and learn to send signals and space craft out into the universe was an incredibly short span of time.
Off the top of my head...
- The Universe is estimated to be around 13.8 billions years old
- The Earth is estimated to be around 4.6 billion years old
- Life on Earth is believed to have started around 3.6 billion years ago
- Life on Earth has existed for approximately 26% of the age of the Universe
I think the presentation was designed to show why "we're special".
Perhaps we're special because for supposedly intelligent life forms, we don't much care about, you know, facts and stuff - at least if it doesn't suit our purposes.
Or perhaps the ability to create one's own facts is a special sign of a higher intelligence? 
You should probably see the presentation for yourself instead of deriving the meaning of it from hearsay promoted on the part of someone who has relayed what impressions they took from it. I think the idea was more about an acceleration of evolution rather than total span of time and I did a bad job of explaining that.
While I was checking the 3.7 billion figure I noticed that many of the same scientists that have determined that life on earth is 3.5-3.7 billions years old also feel that it is possible that life in the universe might be 10 billion years old... a possible 6.5 billion year head start isn't trivial. Imagine what kind of iPhones we'll be using 3 billion years from now.
Additionally, Many of the folks that have determined that the universe is only 13.8 billion years old haven't figured out what the universe was 13.9 billion years ago... while other folks figure that it was probably some kind of universe.
best regards,
mike
Well, I'm sorry Mike, but I
still don't understand what you meant
You must understand it though, because you obviously attempted to make some sort of point by posting it.
I don't get why you'd just make that statement in isolation, without adding some explanation of why you posted it. Or if it was directly in response to some other post in this thread.
It seems a bit like the 'old' McQ, who'd say something vague and ambiguous and then sit back to see what reaction it garnered before coming down on one side of the fence.
So, in the interest of the continuance of an intellectual discussion, what point were you trying to make by saying:
mike_mccue
I heard a presentation recently that pointed out that, when you consider the age of the universe and our planet, [<font]the amount of time it took for life to appear and learn to send signals and space craft out into the universe was an incredibly short span of time.
Or was it just some uninteresting trivia based on some half-random googling and then hoping that someone like me, for example, who has actually studied evolutionary biology and taken a long and deep interest in cosmology, might be fooled into thinking you had an intelligent or relevant point to make.