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Where Have All the Spacemen Gone? Speculations On the Fermi ParaRead the article this discussion is about
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» desertblue - okay, another thought Add to these arguments the another type of temporality. I have heard arguments that rocks could well be organisms, yet with such a slow metabolism and long life span, that we cannot detect it. I have read about the planet being an organism, and the Gaia Hypothesis holds enough water with me to be plausible.Indeed, there are creatures we know of with lifespans so short that it seems tragic - like the moths who pupate, spawn and die over the course of 24 hours. We cannot say that their sense of time perception is such that, to them, they do not experience a full life. We are, in a sense, mobile Earths, each of us supporting entire ecosystems of bugs, fungi and microscopic fauna. They live their spans completely unaware of our "intelligence", like we might do on our host (ie, the planet). We even have cells, like white blood cells, that behave like independant life forms...how different are these immune cells from, say, amoebas in a pond? And endosymbiotic theory implies that even our cells are ecosystems themselves to prokaryotic lifeforms (with their own DNA)that have learned to be symbiotic to eukaryotes: the mitochondria, for example. The chloroplasts. The midi-chlorians (oops, sorry, wrong galaxy). My point is that life, intelligence, civilization and temporal perceptions could change radically from different points of view, clouding our ability to recognize other lifeforms, even if presented with them. There are other possibilities. An interesting TNG ep had some kind of tiny crystalline lifeform that only aquired intelligence (to our perception) once enough crystals had formed. If you understand crystalline growth, this makes complete sense. How would we have known NOT to terraform their planet (and commmit xenocide) if they didn't pull a darker "Horton Hears A Who" scenario on us? I think the crystal spheres idea is certainly elegant, if unusual. Maybe the whole universe is a type of organism as well. A larger Gaia Theory. Such 'nesting' spheres - if found - would be one evidence of that. Jill -- posted by desertblue
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