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Have just finished reading Death From The Skies by Phil Plait. A good read as long as you're not going to become depressed by all of the many and nasty ways in which we and our Earth will eventually perish.
He makes the point that war always accelerates the advancement of technology. He therefore suggests that a warlike race is more likely to develop superior technology and therefore be more likely to cross interstellar space in search of new planets. However, this race, being warlike, is also more likely to be xenophobic, paranoid, suspicious of life on other planets. He therefore wonders if they may strike out at any planet capable of supporting life before the same happens to themselves. He also points out that since this and several other scenarios that he describes have not happened to us in the last 4.5 billion years, it seems unlikely that it will happen.
Stuart
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