"matty-o" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message 
news:2MudnS9IuJg4wSrfRVn-sw@comcast.com...

"Steve O" <stoboyle@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:3hjgliFhdj2aU1@individual.net...

<snip>

What if some aliens
are a billion years ahead of us?

Unlikely.
If the universe has been around for about 14 billion years, give or take 
a billion or two, and it took intelligent life on this planet around 14 
billion years to get where it is today, it's unlikely that there are any 
aliens billions of years ahead of us.
Not enough time.

Although we don't know for sure either way, saying that it's unlikely for 
an alien species to be 1 billion years ahead of us because, "...it took 
intelligent life on this planet around 14 billion years to get where it is 
today..." is incorrect in principle.  It took us 14 billion years to "get 
where we are today" because our sun didn't even FORM until 4.5 billion 
years ago.  In effect, it only took us 4.5 billion years, give or take.

No, that's not exactly right.
I realised that my statement could be misinterpreted as soon as I had posted 
it.
What I should have said was that the universe has been around for about 14 
billion years, and it took at least ten billion years before any form of 
life even started to develop or had the opportunity to develop.
Given that timescale, it would be ublikely that any alien life form would be 
"billions of years ahead of us" - unless , of course, they found a way to 
develop faster within the 4 billion year window than we did.

stars have been forming constantly for the past 12-15 billion years 
(depending on whom you ask), if an intelligent alien race popped up around 
a star that formed a MERE 6 billion years ago, they could very well be 1 
billion years ahead of us technologically and culturally (and several 
billion years farther along than that if you concede that their star 
formed perhaps 9 or 10 billion years ago).

The point is, there has been PLENTY of time for SEVERAL intelligent 
species to develop, each one a billion-or-so years more advanced than the 
previous one.

Matty-o