"Steve O" <stoboyle@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:3hrj2cFigjfdU1@individual.net...

"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>

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.

This, again, is wrong in principle.  Once again, it took 10 billion-or-so 
years
for life to develop around our sun because our sun DIDN'T EVEN EXIST
for the first 10 billion-or-so years of the universe.  Your argument is 
based on
a VERY earth-centric view of how things came together.
The earliest stars and galaxies formed a mere 100,000,000 years after the 
big bang,
and the largest of those stars probably started going supernova shortly 
thereafter.
This means there could've been sufficient heavy elements to make planet 
formation (and consequently life)
possible within 1 or 2 billion years.  That's a full 8 BILLION YEARS before 
the earth formed.
This, in theory, give the earliest intelligent species (if they ever even 
came about) an 8 billion year head start
on humanity.
Your argument seems to be that since the earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, 
NO OTHER PLANED
could've formed before that.  That's nonsense.


Matty-o

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