Quote:
Originally Posted by bigjoe
... with all the chances, permutations,replicating molecules meteorite bombardments involved etc to get to our stage, they must be a long, long, long, way away.
|
Which is what the Drake equation attempted to do (at least in terms of being able to detect them by their transmissions:- (again from Wikipedia)
Edit: paste didn't work, here is the link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
This was in 1961, I assume the figures you might plug into it today would be different from then and there might be other factors that might be included. Back then it was the middle of the cold war and the figure for "blowing ourselves up" seemed higher (does anyone still have their ban the bomb placard?) than it might be now.