This issue will recur as more is learned about the universe in general and about exoplanets in particular. Whatever provisional conclusions have been reached could be overturned tomorrow.
A quotation from Brian Cox came across my computer screen yesterday. He thought that unicellular life should be common in the universe and maybe even elsewhere in the Solar System. However, a vast amount of time has to elapse between single living cells and then - consciousness, intelligence, civilization and technology. None of this is predestined to happen. If plants but not animals survive best in a particular environment, then that is all that will evolve there.
If we are alone in the observable universe, that part of reality that is observable by us, then we alone are responsible for preserving meaning and understanding in that part of the universe, a big responsibility. If we wipe ourselves out soon, then it would be good to have learned at least that we were not alone. So, while fearing that intelligence is rare, we hope that it is not.
9 comments:
We can't observe earth-like planets yet, though we will in the immediate future. And we wouldn't be able to detect intelligent life if it was pre-technological.
Kaor, Paul!
Besides what Stirling said I would add I simply don't believe ours is the only intelligent species to exist in the Galaxy. I think we should also pay more attention to Anderson's suggestion in IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS? that mankind might simply have achieved high technology earlier than other races.
I can see many other species existing right now at levels of technology ranging from that of the Old Stone Age to what mankind had achieved by AD 1300. Also, non-human races living on worlds poor in metals and other resources might well need a vastly longer time to achieve high tech. That was the idea Anderson used for the Aleriona in THE STAR FOX. Alerion was a metals poor world orbiting a red dwarf star.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But we can't just "simply believe" something. It is a matter of the probabilities at each filter stage. Apparently the transition from unicellular to multicellular is a big filter.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I still don't buy the stress placed on that "filter," due to there not being enough evidence to justify it.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But people who know how cells work have calculated probabilities.
Paul.
I did see the conjecture that an earth size rocky world with significantly less uranium and thorium would have plate tectonics for less time than earth has had and lose it's habitability after maybe 2 or 3 billion years rather than after the 4.5 billion years earth has had up to now. So that is one more filter on a world being able to evolve a technological civilization.
Also, sheer accidents happen. Would we be here if an asteroid had not wiped out the dinosaurs? Or it might have been that our ancestors were wiped out by an asteroid.
Kaor, Paul1!
Probabilities are not enough unless backed up by hard evidence. All I'm seeing are guesses.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Calculations of probabilities of cellular fusions are more than guesses! They are backed up by the hard evidence of the infrequency of two single simple cells combining to become one single complex cell. Every time two simple cells are observed to come into contact, either one eats the other and remains a simple cell or both are destroyed.
Paul.
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