Because of the light speed balloon of radio signals we are constantly
pumping out. Sooner or later, someone is going to notice at the very
least a drastic change in the radio noise level from this quiet little
yellow dwarf we orbit around. SInce most of the stars in our neigborhood
are of similar age, its higly likely that we are temporally coexistent
with another intelligent race within 100 ly or so. Given that we will be
heading out within the next 100 years, its equally likeley we will
either find them, or we will find each other.
A civilization a mere 100 years ahead of us technologically should have
interstellar capability now and be heading this way. If they are more
advanced, then they could already be here.
>
> >I didn't make an argument about whether we have, or will be, visited. I
> >simply tried to say that if anybody was able to visit us thru space, they
> >would probably be able to do so without us detecting them in any way.
>
> I agree.
>
> I am sure the aliens are seriously upset with the disturbing and uncanny
> ability of rednecks and trailer trash to spot their stealthy craft.
Hey, Murphey doesn't give a damn about stealth. At least three of our
own stealth planes have crashed, for all their advancement. Stealth does
not mean that you're invisible to a drunk sitting on his porch or a
co-ed getting porked in the back seat, just that such a vehicle is
designed for "low observability", not "unobservability".
>
> -James Rogers
> jamesr@best.com
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@tpk.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/Mikey's Animatronic Factory My Own Nuclear Espionage Agency (MONEA) MIKEYMAS(tm): The New Internet Holiday Transhumans of New Hampshire (>HNH) ------------------------------------------------------------ #!/usr/local/bin/perl-0777---export-a-crypto-system-sig-RC4-3-lines-PERL @k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_ ]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256; &S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]}