I believe if life is common than there must of been at least one group of aliens that at least attempted to colonize it self everywhere in space?

Unless humans are a extreme anomaly and that most other aliens don’t really care about space exploration, and just focus on their home planet.

  • techpun [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    It might be that self-replicating chemistry is an anomaly and life is extraordinarily rare. It might be that life is common but multicellular life isn't. It might be that whenever a biosphere pops up it gets swiftly eradicated by some cosmic event. It might be that we're extremely early to the game, and the heavy elements that are required for life just didn't exist, or don't generally exist in the right ratios, until around the time our solar system formed.

    It might be that evolving sapience is a crazy unlikely dice roll, or that sex as a means of reproduction is extremely rare to evolve, and thus the genetic mutation rate is way slower.

    Humans have also been around about 250,000 years, of which maybe the last 100 have been us sending out signals, mostly accidentally.

    Also, physics is a real bitch to deal with, and a society that doesn't have some inherent drive to commit to space exploration probably won't bother, even if they otherwise have advanced technology.

    • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Also, physics is a real bitch to deal with, and a society that doesn’t have some inherent drive to commit to space exploration probably won’t bother, even if they otherwise have advanced technology.

      Also, it's very easy to imagine a kind of planet on which intelligent, advanced life could form but which is significantly more difficult to leave than Earth. If you're on a planet with even slightly stronger gravity and thicker atmosphere than ours ... good luck. It won't be easy.