Re: New York Times re Fermi's Question

>"Joseph Lazio" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >>>>> "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>?

Very informative web site! ...

>
> --
> Lt. Lazio, HTML police   | e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> No means no, stop rape.  | http://patriot.net/%7Ejlazio/
> sci.astro FAQ at http://sciastro.astronomy.net/sci.astro.html