Comment by echelon
2 days ago
I love this fact.
Also: life on earth is almost as old as the universe itself, within the same order of magnitude. 4.1 GYA (billion years ago) vs 13.8 GYA. We're old and intelligence is hard.
2 days ago
I love this fact.
Also: life on earth is almost as old as the universe itself, within the same order of magnitude. 4.1 GYA (billion years ago) vs 13.8 GYA. We're old and intelligence is hard.
I think there is a theory that we’re not seeing any aliens simply because life on Earth started so early.
Or there are many planets with life, with each harboring their own equivalent to our sharks.
(And none of those shark-equivalents have developed a space program.)
There is life, then intelligent life like humans. Plus you have physical constraints like the speed of light.
2 replies →
That would be unfortunate.
I’d love to see some space sharks!
2 replies →
I think this is clearer:
Since we're not seeing any aliens, life on Earth must have started very early.
It’s more inaccurate as it’s stating an assumption as fact
That's not that early, no? There was probably enough C, H, N, O, P, S, Na atoms for life to start 10B years ago. You probably couldnt rely on iron being everywhere though but that's not such a hard requirement.
It's fascinating to ponder, for sure.
The universe still has plenty of time to burn, especially red dwarfs. It's sad to think about starless skies, though.
The heme is pretty magical. Probably not a hard requirement, but it sure has been useful for us here.
Yes I love it too, wish more people appreciated it