"I'd say emergent, especially intelligent life would make the stats pages"<p>Very human-centered viewpoint there. Maybe all they care about is how much like '<i>ssevh5</i>' the patterns of galaxies are, or any other ineffable measure - like us with our car drag races.<p>"(where intelligence is measured by awareness of the universe/capability of affecting it etc.)"<p>Dinosaurs couldn't affect things, and when they avoided eating some plants that was just ... luck? Again, you're defining things in a vague human way so only humans fit your description.<p>"I would assume that most of that is just "noise" and would be filtered out leaving the bits of information put out by humanity as a statistically interesting anomaly."<p>Unless we aren't a statistically interesting anomaly. Have you reminded yourself how <i>big</i> the universe is lately?<p><a href="http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/07/" rel="nofollow">http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/07/</a> (Hubble Ultra Deep Field).