Nathalie Cabrol

So the question is whether we are going to be able to move forward

and learn from the mistakes we're making to become a mature civilization.

You probably heard of the Drake equation.

That would be the L at the very end, the duration.

Exactly.

Or at least...

the length of time a civilization remains detectable.

It can disappear from the radar screen literally for a number of reasons.

The first one is

destroy itself or being destroyed by external events, or it can become so in tune with the universe and so advanced that it disappears because it melts really in the background and it's not visible anymore.

There are some wild theories out there saying that civilization might be so advanced that you cannot distinguish them from physical processes.

And that was an example.

It doesn't say that this is the case, but some people say, imagine that.

In fact, all the dark matter that we see or we theorized about is, in fact, some sort of a biological process.

So you can think about a number of things.

Personally, I believe that what you talk about, about preserving our information, is kind of what life does.

We need to look at ourselves differently.

as not different of what the little sail that started off was.

And this is what tells you not about the origin of life, but in fact the nature of life, which is a lot more interesting to me.

Because the nature of life is really what is going to give you some universal signature to look for it all over the place, and not only around ponds of water for life as we know it.