Mindblowing!!!!!

Have you ever re-discovered something which you had forgotten you had? and therefore taken pleasure all over again in finding it?

Whilst standing in the garden late last night, admiring the starlit sky, I made up my mind to read a little more of one of my favourite books. The book is entitled 'Skywatching - the Ultimate Guide to the Universe' by David Levy (co-discoverer of the Shoemaker-Levy Comet).

In this book is a post-it note of something I once read and which struck me as being so incredible that I had to make a note of it!

I thought I'd share it with you!

"Given the size of the galaxy there is a high chance that alien life forms are out there, so why have they never bothered to contact us? (That's the 'where is everybody?' question - known as the 'Fermi Paradox').

A Danish physicist has now come up with an answer... 'give them time'

Using a computer simulation of the Milky Way he has calculated that 8 alien probes, travelling at 1/10 the speed of light (30,000 km/second) and each being capable of launching up to 8 sub-probes, would take 10 BILLION YEARS to explore just 0.4% of the galaxy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just think about that for a minute.....
8 probes with a total of 64 sub-probes...each travelling at 30,000 km/second...would take 10 billion years just to explore 0.4% of the galaxy!!!!

I don't know about you but that blows my mind!

It is something I read ages ago in a copy of 'The Week' magazine (Issue 598 27-01-2007) and which I found quite staggering!

...and yes I have done the calculation - to explore all of the galaxy (not just 0.4% of it) would take 250 BILLION YEARS!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!M I N D B L O W I N G !!!!!!!

See what I mean??

And so now you get an idea as to how tiny the earth is, in the scheme of things!
Do you still wonder if there is life out there...?

Anyway - just thought I'd share that with you :-)