Asri-unix.932 net.space utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:C70:sri-unix!KING@KESTREL Tue Mar 9 12:55:11 1982 life is dangerous on planets! I was recently musing over the possibility that the dinasours met their untimely end at the hands of a large meteorite, and the separate musing that one dinasour was beginning to show some intellegence when the extinction happened. The idea was put forth that an intellegent, warm-blooded reptile might have evolved tens of millions of years ago if this disaster hadn't happened. Is it possible that there is intellegent life on Earth now because an unusually long period has passed since the last meteorite has hit? Perhaps attempts to calculate the distance to the nearest neighbor ought to include a term for intellegences that never "make it" because they keep getting creamed. I don't think I'd like to live on a planet the neighborhood of which contained stars .5 parsecs apart! First, the Sun might be the target of an occasional near-collision. Second, because of the higher density of gas & dust in that region once (or how did there come to be so many stars?) there might be more junk in the solar system then we have. Third, the cometary halo would be more frequently disturbed. Does anyone know whether the distance from the Sun to its nearest neighbor is unusual? Dick ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.