Intergalactic Life

What do you think, are we alone in the universe? Intuition says, no way, what with tens of billions of planets in just our galaxy that could potentially carry life.

Myself, however, I have always believed there is a very big chance we are the only “intelligent” life in the Milky Way. Why?

The scientist Paul Davies once described the situation thus: It requires at least half a dozen very specific circumstances to align for life to arise; there needs to be water, the right temperature, the right gases … etc. etc.

Look at it like this (blog 409): Imagine you hold two pick-up sticks in your hand and you release them. They will fall down and are likely to intersect, probably somewhere in their middle. Now imagine holding three pick-up sticks and releasing them, how big is the chance they will intersect in the same spot? Well, for life to arise is the same as six pick-up sticks getting dropped and they all intersect in the same spot.

Paul Davies and Brian Cox (SMH) believe that is highly unlikely. Me too. And that is probably a good thing. Here are two of those stunning videos from Kurzgesagt ... they make a strong point that a) we're alone, and b) we better hope we are alone. Watch them and have your whole science fiction world as per Star Trek, Star Wars, Aliens etc. re-calibrated. You may want to watch this video bearing in mind my previous blog 885, about Climate Disruption and Dangerous Human Interference.

You may know it or not, but things cosmic fascinate me, I love 'em ... see my blogs 883, 505, 430, 427, 421, 404, 399, 296, 232, 224 ... this last one is a doozy in the context of the two videos on this page. 

I have an essay COSMOS in my book en.light.en.ment