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Thursday, June 21, 2012

HELIOS II off on 60 trillion year trip to send a message to Intelligent Life at edge of Universe

     Helios II is the fastest man-made object ever. If it survives, it will act as a sign of other intelligent life in the Universe for some possible Intelligent Life form living at the currently known edge of the Universe ,14 billion light years away.
   But fast as Helios II is, it is only about one four thousandth the speed of light, so it would take at least 60 trillion years to reach that civilization at the bleeding edge of the currently visible universe.

    Only if Intelligent Life is very close indeed , basically existing on the planets orbiting the stars closest to us, we should we care - ours and their civilizations will be long dead - by natural star death alone - long before we reach each other.
   Even without humanity's best current efforts to speed up the process (shout out to the denier classes !) , the Earth's life will be gone in two billion years .
     At Helios II's top speed (not really sustainable, in practise, for very long) that will take our messenger only 1/60,000 of the way across the Universe and back with its response, if it expects to find any humans left to care.
    I don't believe humanity will ever meet and greet other intelligent life - we might find a few invisible, but living viable, bacteria deep down a hole on Mars, at best.
   But we could get HG Wells in reverse - that Martian bacteria could end up killing all us humans rather than earthly bacteria killing all the Martians.
   Maybe its for the best, if we never find other life off Earth 1.0 ....

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