Continuing my thought process from my Nov 2 posting... What if the probes we send into space and leave our solar system have some effect on the universe? The probe could be a good thing like a white blood cell off to repair some damage or it could be a virus that is then battled by other organisms in the universe. Where we are pushing probes out of our solar system there must be other civilizations pushing out their own probes that are looking for our probes. Maybe what we need to focus on are probes that have more intelligence and can do some scouting for other probes on their own.