Random Encounters....

[Zinjanthropos]

......of life bearing star systems. I don’t know how often it happens but surely at some point in the universe’s history, some stars must get fairly damn close to one another. Close enough that if there was an intelligent life capable of space travel on one of the star’s planetS then perhaps a visit or visits were attempted. 

I was thinking of Andromeda as it approaches the Milky Way, ready to swallow our galaxy and perhaps a chance encounter between two stars relatively close to one another, maybe less than a light year apart. And what if these two stars harboured a planet with life? If one had an intelligence capable of space travel then why not go for it? There’s even a more remote chance that both systems have intelligent life. Considering the amount of galaxies and with what seems like oodles of time, does it seem within the realm of possibility that a trip to another life bearing planet is entirely possible?

Similarly, on a smaller scale, this could very well be happening within our own solar system right now as we venture out, so why not interstellar encounters when the opportunity presents itself? Perhaps in our own history a star system with life has gotten close enough for intelligence to venture towards Earth. A lot of things would have to be in place or develop while proximity exists.

[C C]

Well, in the final episode of Preacher, after the mesmerized Grail members finally track God down at the Alamo... Jesse Custer and God have a chat. The former asks the latter some common, boring questions, among them: "Is there any extraterrestrial life in the rest of the universe?" (or something like that). The response from God is: No.

So I guess that pretty much settles it.

[Zinjanthropos]

Well, in the final episode of Preacher, after the mesmerized Grail members finally track God down at the Alamo... Jesse Custer and God have a chat. The former asks the latter some common, boring questions, among them: "Is there any extraterrestrial life in the rest of the universe?" (or something like that). The response from God is: No.

So I guess that pretty much settles it.

I guess it would

Apparently about 70000 years ago a star came within .8 ly of Sun. Expect another close encounter of the stellar kind in a couple hundred thousand years but a lot farther away. Who knows how many times the Sun has had a visitor in its history or just how often it occurs in the vast array of galaxies populating the universe. Should it have a place in the Drake Equation? 

I've read of past stellar fly by encounters within .5 ly of Sun but couldn't find article. Still, if each solar system contains life then one definitely has to be able to have technologically advanced inhabitants that can travel or even send out a probe or two.

[C C]

Apparently about 70000 years ago a star came within .8 ly of Sun. Expect another close encounter of the stellar kind in a couple hundred thousand years but a lot farther away. Who knows how many times the Sun has had a visitor in its history or just how often it occurs in the vast array of galaxies populating the universe. Should it have a place in the Drake Equation? 

I've read of past stellar fly by encounters within .5 ly of Sun but couldn't find article. Still, if each solar system contains life then one definitely has to be able to have technologically advanced inhabitants that can travel or even send out a probe or two.

While we don't want a Wylie and Balmer situation of life imitating early 1930s science fiction, obviously ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov lend some credence to panspermia by verifying that interstellar visitors can even be fairly frequent.

Though it was only an inner solar system rendezvous, space transitioning thread would rain down on Anne McCaffrey's Pern, whenever the Red Star (actually a highly elliptical planet) got close enough in its orbit.

In Jack Vance's earlier The Dragon Masters, I believe there was a cyclic relationship between two star systems involved in the grephs or Basics periodically returning to Aerlith to abduct humans. But that entry and a lot of others don't seem to mention it. The "Dragon Riders of Pern" series was clearly inspired by Vance's novella, but McCaffrey did make hers significantly different in various ways.

[C C]

The interior of the Milky Way is a lot more crowded than the rural outskirts where Earth is at, which might present more opportunities. But there also far more life-destroying events like gamma ray bursts, supernovas, gravitational disturbances that hurl wave of comets into planets for thousands of years, etc.

[Zinjanthropos]

The interior of the Milky Way is a lot more crowded than the rural outskirts where Earth is at, which might present more opportunities. But there also far more life-destroying events like gamma ray bursts, supernovas, gravitational disturbances that hurl wave of comets into planets for thousands of years, etc.

I’m only interested in the chance. If there’s one such encounter in each galaxy of 50 billion stars, every 10 billion years, then it’s already happened about a trillion times in the observable universe. When we think of panspermia is the tendency to think small?