Plenty of Earths await discovery

One "why no contact" theory is that developing scientific cultures tend to go thru the same process of discovery and engineering ... eventually reaching a point where they invent something that wipes out the whole dang planet.

When the first atomic bomb was detonated on Earth, scientists gave it a non-trivial probability that, considering they knew they didn't fully understand what would happen, the detonation's chain reaction might just continue until the whole planet was consumed.

Recently there was news that a black hole (just a little one) may have been created in a lab. Had it been of self-sustaining size (and not promptly evaporate due to Hawking radiation), it could have plummeted thru the floor, began an oscillating path thru the Earth's core, and increasingly hoovered up the planet.

Other doomsday technologies are conceivable: cobalt-caked nukes (radiation & distribution balanced to give _everyone_ terminal radiation poisoning), genetically engineered ultrabugs (stabilized Ebola turns everyone to goo), physics experiments gone haywire (quark-level chain reaction breaks down all Earth matter), MAD nuclear war (nuclear winter starves all), and so on.

Obviously we haven't gotten there yet ... but technology advances mean smaller packages can adversely affect more people. One good solid technological mistake, statsitically inevitable, could mean every intelligent species in the universe invariably wipes itself out before contacting anyone else. Those first interstellar warp drive tests just _never_ go right...

Or maybe they just have a habit of creating the "history eraser button" and there's always some bozo who actually pushes it:

I read all the other posts, only after I had already responded.. I wouldn't have bothered if I had seen them first..
No sense "piling on".. LOL..

In my own defense, it was not so much the failure to attribute it to Clark, as it was attributing it to (ech!) Pickard.. ( what an insufferable ass.. )
I am a long-time SF-Fantasy reader and die-hard fan, and while I enjoyed STTNG, it was often disappointing, as were the other "spin-offs".. ( even more so )

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.