"SandChigger" <sandchigger@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote
We know a lot more about Canopus than we did when Frank Herbert wrote
the first three books. It's not certain, for example, whether such a
massive star would form a normal planetary system, but it's thought
that it will have a very short lifetime, measured only in hundreds of
millions of years, as opposed to the billions for a star the size of
the Sun.
Because of the short stellar lifetime, it is very unlikely that life
would arise on any planets before the star goes nova. (It's thought it
took about 800 million years for the first life to appear on Earth,
for example.) And even if it did, it wouldn't have enough time to
evolve into something intelligent.
Tony wrote:
Yes, excellent point. I don't think FH intended that Arrakis was
inhabited
before the arrival of the sandworms. But I wonder if the aliens we're
considering could have been so evolved that they would have appeared to be
gods to the ancient Greeks such as Agamemnon.
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