- #176
Ivan Seeking
Staff Emeritus
Science Advisor
Gold Member
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SGT said:What does that mean? 4th and 5th generation stars were formed 1 billion years after the Big Bang?
No, I mean that ETs could have up to a billion years head start on us.
Well, I think that 4 billion years is a very reasonable amount of time to create an intelligent species.
"I think" is hardly a good argument. Again, is there any evidence to show that we evolved in a minimum of time?
The mass extinctions were beneficial to our appearance. Without them the great predators would survive, with no chance for smaller predators like the vertebrates initially and mammals hundreds of million years later to flourish. Big predators don´t need intelligence. They survive and reproduce very well without it.
That all depends on the stressors encountered. There is no way to know what might have evolved in the absense of mass extinctions.