I make it a point to pick one subject that interests me a month and search as many journals as I can (places I have worked have extensive online subscriptions) to find info on the subject. I go through dozens of scientific journals an scan many hundreds of abstracts from many different years....and read the articles that seem relavent

About a year ago I decided to study resolutions to Fermi's paradox.....ie "If there were ETI we should see evidence of it all over...."

I came across an interesting paper that did a statistical analysis that very convincingly showed that given the rate of supernovae, hypernovae, meteor collissions, gamma ray bursts, etc. that life was not favored by the universe...

The conclusion of the article was given earths position in the galaxy, statistically we should expect the extinction of all higher life forms about once every few hundred million years.... I am not qualified to evaluate their conclusions (and no I dont have the citation) but could it be we have so far been dealt a royal flush repeatedly, just gotten lucky? While others have not?

This might explain Fermi's paradox.... If on average life gets reduced to single celled bacteria every few hundred million years there would be low likelyhood of seeing evidence of ET intelligence....

Of course "there are lies, damn lies and statistics"

just throwing it out there...space board has been quiet... too quiet... _in space no one can hear you post_.....