On 01-11-98 Andrew Cummins wrote to Day Brown... 
 AC> ... So, until you find new mechanisms and new 
 AC> forms of "life" you're not in much of a position to expect life 
 AC> to more likely be found one place rather than another.  You 
 AC> shouldn't expect to find life any place. 
I don't *expect* to find life at any place, or any time. 
but given *all* the time of the universe, and all the 
places within it, I would not be surprised any more than 
if they found it in the deep ocean volcanic trenches. 
 
Until that find Andrew, the assumption had always been 
that life needed to be based on solar, not chemical forms 
of energy.  Now that chemical forms have been found, it 
opens up a vast new array of possibility, even within our 
own solar system, where such chemical conditions might be 
suitable.  Of course, I cannot *expect* this, but it does 
seem likely given the number of other places in the vast 
array of stellar systems that we see. 
 
There is the idea that life is adaptive, and that growth 
only occurs in the face of challenge. so it is that my 
Aryan ancestors were driven out of Africa, and confronted 
with the challenge of the ice age, made, as Neitzsche has 
said, 'that which does not kill me makes me stronger'. 
 
So also it seems that the life on this earth itself has 
been challenged by the impact of comets on it every 25 
million years or so.  Had it not been for the one at the 
end of the cretaceous, dinosaurs would probly still rule 
the earth. 
 
I do not know if any other stellar systems that exist do 
in fact, have an ort cloud full of comets to rain in on, 
and disasterously damage life forms on inner planets, and 
thereby, challenge the status quo which promotes evolution 
and more adaptive life forms such as ourselves. 
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