why did those bjork simulations only consider one other alien life-form? what if there are millions of different alien species, and a thousand of them have enough technology to do what bjork's simulation described. wouldn't that reduce the time-frame from 10bn to only 10million?

why don't those probes plant themselves on various planets, mining/harvesting common resources, constructing more of themselves as well as probes built just to search, and churn them out until they can no longer sustain themselves? or is that too absurd?

i think it would be pretty groovy.

julz

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_probe#Von_Neumann_probes

once again: groovy.