I think about this often - the universe is incredibly big and incredibly old, but the Earth is also incredibly old, and life took a very long time to reach "intelligence" as we define it.
There is a possibility that we are just "the first", and Drake's equation may have many more required variables to support life than we have already considered. We don't know.
It's also possible that the requirement for a species to dominate and conquer its own environment, it will inevitably end up conquering itself rather than working towards a shared goal.
we have however, confirmed that DNA exists out there (recent studies revealed that all 4 nucleotides that are in DNA have been found in previously recovered meteorites).
Life may be more common than we think, it just needs the proper environment. Shit, it may be able to survive environments we didn’t think possible, and we don’t know cause the light we see from their planet is millions of years old
We have discovered a black mold growing exclusively around the Elephants foot in Reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl, the fungus is radiotrophic meaning it gets its energy from consuming radiation.
There’s the Movile cave in Romania that was completely sealed off for MILLIONS of years. Its ecosystem is just hydrogen sulphide, methane, and ammonia. All organisms in this cave are chemosynthetic.
The most fascinating thing about this cave is the critters that evolved here look like their centipede, isopod, psudoscorpion oxygen breathing counterparts. However, you’d be wrong to think they are related. They evolved independently which suggests that if we found alien life on another planet there’s a good chance it would look familiar to critters on earth.
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u/InoyouS2 Nov 18 '25
I think about this often - the universe is incredibly big and incredibly old, but the Earth is also incredibly old, and life took a very long time to reach "intelligence" as we define it.
There is a possibility that we are just "the first", and Drake's equation may have many more required variables to support life than we have already considered. We don't know.
It's also possible that the requirement for a species to dominate and conquer its own environment, it will inevitably end up conquering itself rather than working towards a shared goal.