Re: New York Times re Fermi's Question

>>>>> "MG" == Matt Giwer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

MG> Alfred A. Aburto Jr. wrote:
>>> "Matt Giwer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>>> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>>> 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. 

>> Or to one region of a galaxy or cluster of galaxies ...

MG> Speaking of which, why so many even numbered elements in our
MG> version of life?

You mean like the pattern shown in
<URL:http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/users/cowley/sad.html>?

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