From: someone@microsoft.com   
      
   [snippage]   
   > We calculate human years and dog years, differently.   
   [snippage]   
      
   Metabolic rate is the key. What do we mean when we speak of a long time?   
   According to the best estimate, the universe is ~14 billion years old, in   
   its current apparition. Using the mathematics of genetic sequence   
   similarity, genetics says that the last common ancestor of all life on   
   Earth, was a thermophilic organism with a sulfur metabolism. Hence it lived   
   at the bottom of the ocean near hydrothermal vents. The best candidate is   
   the Archaean, a distinct branch of the tree of life. 1) It has about 1000   
   genes and 2) a "rubber membrane". All subsequent life has a lipid membrane.   
   Archaeans have been found viable after 250 million years within ancient   
   buried salt deposits. A rubber membrane (spacesuit) is an evolutionary   
   adaptation for space travel. Brownlee collected particles using balloons   
   that were smaller than the smallest micrometeorite of ~50 microns. Smaller   
   than 50 microns space dust no longer satisfies the assumptions of continuum   
   mechanics and doesn't become hot and luminescent, because there is no shock   
   wave. The need to invent no new physics, means they fell into the gravity   
   well of the Solar system from above, some where in the plane of our galaxy.   
   There exist low mass icy bodies that could harbor life and its evolution.   
   From the rate of microbial DNA evolution it is reasonable to estimate the   
   time for evolution of 1000 genes, as 5.5 billion years, starting from the   
   appearance of the first dextro - deoxyribonucleotide. This in turn was a   
   metabolic product of a pre-existing RNA metabolism. Our genome is the   
   products of 10 billion years of evolution. The oldest known star here, is 12   
   billion years old. The chemical elements necessary for life evolved from   
   stellar nucleogenesis and super nova explosions.   
      
   This is the essence of what I presented in a peer reviewed talk that I   
   self-published. Carl Sagan and SETI have been falsified. Now we are alone in   
   the universe. Either we can wait a long time for new intelligent life to   
   emerge, or we can get there first and violate the "Prime Directive". In the   
   latter case, all intelligent life in the universe is evolved from us. Note,   
   when we look outward we look backwards in time. We are at the oldest place   
   in the universe, according to astronomical observations.   
      
   Caveat: the ice age glaciations may have wiped out all evidence of   
   pre-existing civilization on Earth. But the current ice age in which we live   
   is less that 3-6 million years old, a long time in human years but short in   
   geologic time   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)