The Sun Steals Comets from Other Stars

wrote:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...v_aliencomets/

The Sun Steals Comets from Other Stars
NASA Science News

Nov. 23, 2010: The next time you thrill at the sight of a comet
blazing across the night sky, consider this: it's a stolen pleasure.
You're enjoying the spectacle at the expense of a distant star.
...
Comets in the Oort Cloud are typically 1 or 2 miles across, and they're
so far away that estimating their numbers is no easy task. But Levison
and his team say that, based on observations, that there should be
something like 400 billion comets there. The "domestic" model of comet
formation can account for a population of only about 6 billion.

I have long thought that galatic interstellar space is peppered with
comets left over from star formation. That is to say the Oort cloud
tapers off more slowly than currently expected to the point the clouds
of stars overlap significantly.

Get fusion drives, start mining the comets, move on to colonizing the
Kuiper belt then Oort cloud, end up having civilization gradually shift
from planets to the comets of interstellar space. Should this model
work, the SETI approach of pointing at stars would be the wrong way to
find interstellar civilizations.

My idea is extremely speculative but eventually fusion drives will be
developed and we'll see what happens in the centuries that follow.