From: Alintelbot@aol.com
Date: Fri Jul 23 1999 - 17:30:13 MDT
>I don't think a civilisation capable of interstellar travel is going
>to engage in building megalithic structures on planetary surfaces. As
>far as we know interstellar travel requires micro craft built with
>nanotechnological means. Shortly after arrival it autoamplifies into a
>vast machine ecology living in space as their native habitat. There is
>no point for them to descend down the gravitational gradient for
>purposes other than large-scale mining (leading eventually to
>planetary deconstruction).
I don't think this is the _only_ sort of alien technology we should be
looking for, but it's certainly a good scenario. List members tend to assume
that "exotic" ventures like interstellar colonization will necessarily rely
on all kinds of fancy nanotech, but don't forget that the idea of traveling
to other stars isn't as exotic as it used to be, in a way. If our history
had gone just slightly differently (and I'm not refeering to our space
program, but to world history in general) we might have already sent out
craft using ramjet and ion proulsion.
While the nano-alien scenario is intriguing, I'm not ready to say we've never
been visited just because we don't see any evidence of this specific kind of
visitation.
--Mac Tonnies
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