Why is SETI not receiving ET signals? - Addendum

"...Our species is reintroducing into the biosphere, the carbon that has been trapped and covered over by consecutive eons of time. The oil and coal that we extract, seemingly for our own purposes, is much like the beaver building a dam. We unknowingly trigger unintended events that may not be conducive for the existence of our species, but may be of great benefit to the system as a whole. What if, in performing this inevitable action, we would have fulfilled our role - the byproduct of which - is that our species is slated for extinction?

Taking it a step further, what if this is the sole purpose of sentience? That it is a pattern of inevitable extinction that repeats itself endlessly, for ever, everywhere in the Universe - an infinity of species evolving sentience, fertilizing the biosphere, then self-destructing? There would be no super civilizations, merely temporary emergences of blossoming and dying clusters of sentience..."

I have often been asked asked about this. "How on earth would such a cataclysmic event possibly benefit the planet?"

There are of course many things we don't understand about planets such as ours yet. For example, the discovery of Continental Drift, the continual regurgitating of oceanic plates, is a relatively recent discovery. It is yet one more nail in the coffin of the notion that our Universe is some sort of unchanging Newtonian cuckoo clock assembly.

Our planet is incredibly old. If we accept the presently accepted age of 3.4 billion years, we are faced with a space of time so vast as to be incomprehensible. Something as insignificant as a major thermonuclear war with all the plastic on the planet going up in radioactive smoke would be but a hiccup to the biosphere.

Come back sixty million years later - the equivalent of a day in the life of our planet - and you will be confronted with a rich biosphere awash in a plethora of species. The radiation that we introduced into the biosphere will have accelerated mutation and the carbon - the building blocks of life -  contributed to a greater variety of life forms.

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| Part 1- Why is SETI not receiving ET signals? |

| Part 3 - Why is SETI not receiving ET signals? - Afterthought |

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