Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mmintl.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Re: why nobody's visited Message-ID: <559@mmintl.UUCP> Date: Mon, 5-Aug-85 11:50:01 EDT Article-I.D.: mmintl.559 Posted: Mon Aug 5 11:50:01 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 8-Aug-85 01:30:59 EDT References: <3065@topaz.ARPA> Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT Lines: 18 Summary: You don't need habitable planets In article <3065@topaz.ARPA> DP0N@CMU-CS-A.ARPA writes: >From: Don.Provan@CMU-CS-A > >Remember the classic SF short that theorized that detecting which >stars had habitable planets was such a trick that one extremely >advanced civilization never found it and finally just died out > [...] > >This seems so likely (except it probably isn't possibile to detect >which systems are worth visiting, not merely hard) that I don't >find it the least bit surprising that we haven't been visited. This seems superficially plausible, but it doesn't stand up to closer examination. You don't need habitable planets! You don't even need planets at all. All you need is materials to make habitats out of, and a power source (= a star). It seems likely that most if not all stars have matter orbiting them; we know that several nearby ones do (Vega, for example).