Anthony Cerrato wrote:

"John Leonard" <jleonard2.butnospam@si.rr.com> wrote in
message news:9jgQa.30750$Aw.8269@twister.nyc.rr.com...

"Matt Giwer" <jull43@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
news:K2aQa.11259$k85.648824@twister.tampabay.rr.com...

Do not bother working up a sweat over a billion years when a mere 100
is unimaginable.

In other words, it is unimaginable that life may have begun as much as 100
years earlier than life on Earth? (It didn't have to occur on a planet
opposite our sun).

John Leonard

John; I'm not sure exactly what Matt is getting at here, but
I must admit your original question is a bit confusing.

    I find speculation on "advanced alien civilizations" only suitable for science fiction not for rational speculation. There is still some interest in what Verne and Wells predicted but if you look at the early material talking about what they predicted and compare that to what we would say about it today.

    Anyway everyone speculating a century ago missed the major features of today. And the "hits" are mostly stretching generalities.

    Let me not remake and old issue of mine. Lets just agree that two centuries of technology is totally unimaginable.

    With any of those advanced civilization a mere two centuries difference in progress is advanced beyond imagination. When talking time frames of just our generation stars starting some 6 billion years ago (pick a number, I am not current on this) 200 years is well in the noise and also sufficiently advanced enough to be magic in Clarke's terms. If it a million years to be sufficiently advances there are 6000 million years for our metal heavy solar systems.

    People who spend a lot of time thinking about space just barely have a grasp of the distances involved. But very few appear to have a grasp of the time involved in terms of progress.

    To the Drake equation add a term or two for civilizations who maintain an interest in expansion and/or communication and/or exploration for more than enough million years to frustrate Fermi's "Where are they?" question.

    The temptation here is to try to imagine when in fact it is unimaginable the future in such trivially small fraction of the smallest time frame of metal rich stars to which we can limit consideration. And trivial arguments can make these six billion years to small.

    Some day I will write this up in a coherent fashion, maybe, likely not. It is one of those things once you see it, it becomes to trivial to explain.