Paper: astro-ph/0512445

Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 17:56:49 GMT (76kb)

Title: Planetary catastrophe risks cannot generally be inferred from the
Earth's formation date

Authors: Adrian Kent (Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical
Physics, University of Cambridge)

Comments: 2 pages
\\
Tegmark and Bostrom's provocative analysis of the chances of a "doomsday
catastrophe" [Nature 438, 754 (2005)] sets out an interesting idea, but
unfortunately contains a fundamental error which invalidates their conclusions.
The essential problem with their argument can be seen by considering the
assertion that "if [planet-destroying] catastrophes were very frequent, then
almost all intelligent civilisations would have arisen much earlier than ours".
This does not follow from Tegmark and Bostrom's assumptions.

\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0512445 , 0kb)