Like you rede, I just cannot believe we are the sole planet to have given rise to sentient life. Were dinosaurs sentient though? They certainly could neither send nor receive radio messages*, like Mike suggests in his remarks about about the slime worms.
rede-Your depressing second paragraph has forced me to consider that it is probably true that technologically advanced civilisations hold the seeds to their own destruction. Only such a civilisation could contact the others out there, and going on our environmental efforts over the years there would not be much left for the aliens who reply to communicate with. We certainly lack self-mastery!
Perhaps our best bet is that a developmentally advanced civilised bunch of space explorers could give us a hand out of our present problems. However since they themselves would have had to have passed through Type 1 unscathed it's not looking promising.
Maybe however, the biggest danger is that we would not be able to detect or recognise aliens. Is it possible that life forms could evolve that are not carbon based, and would we know what they were if they did?
*having re-read this I am hoping I am wrong, maybe there was a Marconi-saurus tapping away on its crystal set!
Last edited by Ellis; 04/05/10 05:59 AM. Reason: punctuation
