From: Russell Whitaker (russell_whitaker@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Jan 11 2001 - 09:52:07 MST
Someone please forward this to Robert Zubrin. The penultimate
chapter of his *Entering Space*
("http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1585420360/"), "Meeting
ET", is one of number of flaws* in an otherwise mostly excellent
work**.
There, he jiggers the Drake Equation to show outrageous
values for components such as f-sub-ell on the righthand
side of the equation.
Russell
* - some other flaws, in brief:
1.) surprisingly unresearched typical statement about freezing
damage (the "cells expand and rupture" business) due to cryonic
suspension
2.) strawman arguments against feasibility of molecular
nanotechnology
3.) his embrace of Apollo-style government expenditures
- and government funding in general - to reach Mars
** - otherwise, I do highly recommend this book.
>From: "John Clark" <jonkc@worldnet.att.net>
>
>In today's issue of Nature a team of scientists from UCLA and the
>Curtin University of Technology in Perth Australia present strong
>evidence that liquid water existed on Earth at least 4.3 billion years ago,
>400 million years earlier than previously thought. The oldest known fossil
>is 3.85 billion years old and if we only started to get liquid water 3.9
>billion
>ago as had been believed then the origin of life, at least the simplest
>forms of it, must have formed very quickly and thus be easy to do.
>But if life needed those extra 400 million years to get started then it
>might
>not be effortless for nature to produce even the most rudimentary life
>forms.
>This may mean that simple life as well as the complex stuff like us is rare
>in the universe.
>
> John K Clark jonkc@att.net
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:04:45 MST