I entirely agree with Evie here.
The sole defining characteristic of shared by all life is that it has a metabolism. We just need to widen our perception of what life can be and be ready to recognise entirely new forms of it. There is absolutely no reason to think that life only exists on this planet, and there is plenty of reason to suspect that panspermia is correct.
It would be scientifically more significant to find that we were the only life in the universe, although how you would be able to determine that I don't know. Our brains, societies and technological achievements are part of same arrow of time extending back through evolutionary, geological and cosmological time scales whereby complexity increases locally to more efficiently degrade thermodynamic gradients and maximise entropy globally. It is ludicrous to think that we're the most advanced point of that process anywhere in the universe.
Human history can be fitted within 10,000 years give or take. Compare this to dinosaurs walking the earth 65 million years ago, or the fact that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Another species could have evolved on another planet just 100,000 years ago and managed to navigate through its own long emergency and would be unimaginably advanced compared to us.
What is in doubt though is whether we'll ever find another intelligent species and whether we can ever achieve travel freely among the stars.
The sole defining characteristic of shared by all life is that it has a metabolism. We just need to widen our perception of what life can be and be ready to recognise entirely new forms of it. There is absolutely no reason to think that life only exists on this planet, and there is plenty of reason to suspect that panspermia is correct.
It would be scientifically more significant to find that we were the only life in the universe, although how you would be able to determine that I don't know. Our brains, societies and technological achievements are part of same arrow of time extending back through evolutionary, geological and cosmological time scales whereby complexity increases locally to more efficiently degrade thermodynamic gradients and maximise entropy globally. It is ludicrous to think that we're the most advanced point of that process anywhere in the universe.
Human history can be fitted within 10,000 years give or take. Compare this to dinosaurs walking the earth 65 million years ago, or the fact that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Another species could have evolved on another planet just 100,000 years ago and managed to navigate through its own long emergency and would be unimaginably advanced compared to us.
What is in doubt though is whether we'll ever find another intelligent species and whether we can ever achieve travel freely among the stars.
