We all know the most critical questions in the whole world: are we alone in the Universe? How old is the Universe? NASA is currently trying to teach its telescopes – TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) – how to answer these questions when looking for habitable exoplanets. However, a scientist has shown that the search for alien life is useless after he studied life on Earth.
Dr. Nick Longrich stated that our evolutionary history continuously shows that many vital adaptations, and he’s not only referring to intelligence, but also to complex cells, animals, and photosynthesis, were one of a kind, and highly improbable. He compared our evolution to winning the lottery, but less likely.
Humans are not capable of finding the right size of the Universe. The Milky Way has in its composition 100 billion stars, and there are a trillion galaxies – at least – in the Universe that’s visible to us, that fraction that’s the perceivable Universe.
There’s the Fermi paradox, which suggests that we should have encountered alien life by now. Taking into account the fact that habitable worlds are very rare, we should still keep in mind that there are many planets which show that life should exist, besides us. Our Universe is vast and old, and there is no evidence of intelligence out there.
Dr. Longrich comes with quite a different approach to the question: he wants to study 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history, and he wants to see if/where evolution repeated itself. He stated that it looks like the evolution sometimes repeats itself and that there are different species which independently converge, and have similar results. If evolution really repeats itself, it means that our evolution is inevitable.
As our second lead editor, Anna C. Mackinno provides guidance on the stories Great Lakes Ledger reporters cover. She has been instrumental in making sure the content on the site is clear and accurate for our readers. If you see a particularly clever title, you can likely thank Anna. Anna received a BA and and MA from Fordham University.