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From: bnw@crash.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: The Great Silence
Message-ID: <3157@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Wed, 7-Aug-85 03:12:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3157
Posted: Wed Aug  7 03:12:53 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Aug-85 20:47:50 EDT
Sender: daemon@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: 

Perhaps the problem is simply that there is no reason why anyone should have
found us.  This is an excerpt from _Cosmos_ by Dr. Carl Sagan.
     ". . .If a great many years ago an advanced interstellar spacefaring
civilization emerged 200 light-years away, it would have no reason to think
there was anything special about the Earth unless it had been here already.
No artifact of human technology, not even our radio transmissions, has had
time, even travelling at the speed of light, to go 200 light-years.  From
their point of view, all nearby star systems are more or less equally
attractive for exploration or colonization."
     ". . .A sphere two hundred light-years in radius contains 200,000 suns
and perhaps a comparable number of worlds suitable for colonization. . ."
 
     Why the silence?  We're just one little regarded blue-green world at
the unfashionable end of a spiral arm in the Milky Way galaxy.
                                                         /Bruce N. Wheelock/
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