sent2null space

[Comment posted to friends Facebook article thread today. He thought we were ruining the environment, and in this slice of time indeed we are...but a grander context shows this to be a blip on a long history of much bigger changes effected by other life systems on Earth before us.] In the eye blink of Geologic time that we've been here, Earth...over which we kvetch so, is going to "belch" and free herself of the scourge that is us. The belch may be a super massive Caldera explosion or it may be ...due to her crossing the path of a cosmic pebble dislodged from the Asteroid belt or it may be the next deep Ice Age...but the belch will come. We may go on to reign for 5,000 years of glory and yet...Earth then, can belch and throw *whatever* we evolve into ...headlong into chaos...no matter how powerful. The hiccup in the environmental system that we are indeed causing now will be rectified...and in the vast space of Geologic time to come will be remembered in her records as no...

May, 19 ,2008: In an email with a colleague, I postuled on the significance that gamma ray bursts in the young milky way might have retarded the growth rate of life in the entire galaxy. In a longer email response I listed out the mechanism for my idea. Essentially, GRB's and mettalicity may lead to conditions that periodically restart life processes on a galactic scale. Combined with the stellar level events (asteroids, comets and proto planetary body incursions) this explains a great deal of the reason why we haven't been visited by LGM's. It could simply be the fact that the galaxy and the solar system has only quited down enough for life and intelligent life in general to advance to the point that they would discover advanced technology and the ability to propel themselves between the stars. We are all (those forms of life in elementally conducive parts of the galaxy that is) at roughly the "same" level of technological advance (even if "same" can h...