Re: New York Times re Fermi's Question

Joseph Lazio wrote:

> The next question is, When did the amount of heavy elements build up
> to a sufficient amount that planets and intelligent beings could form?
> We don't yet know the answer to this question, though Mario Livio has
> speculated that this might have taken a large fraction of the
> Universe's age.

	When we know all possible forms of life we will know the elements needed for them. But as 
we know the distribution of elements is not uniform we will still be dealing with the 
statistics of guessing what is a significant concentration of them in the same place for 
life to start. There is no law against life being limited to a small area of one planet 
where the essential elements are all in one place.

--
Hodie decimo quinto Kalendas Decembres MMIII est
     -- The Ferric Webceasar