Ask HN: Why isn't anyone else bothered by the fact that life is only on Earth?

12 points

a year ago

I am aware of the aestivation hypothesis (counter to Fermi’s Paradox), and I am also aware of the Rare Earth Hypothesis. What I am trying to understand is why more effort isn’t expended to determine the state of other life in the universe? Consider that the building blocks of life are biological molecules, which have been found in asteroids [1]. What bothers me is that we know that older Earth-like planets exist in habitable zones, or once had conditions which were habitable. But where are the microfossils, like we find on Earth [2], let along anything more complex, like unicellular organisms, or multicellular organisms? Even if you hypothesize some intelligent life form devastated the entire planet and its ecosystem, where is its fossil record? Ruins and garbage record? Or space garbage?

I am bothered by how improbable it is that even simple life forms have not been discovered anywhere else in the universe. The most reasonable explanation after you exclude something artificially forcing life to exist on Earth, or preventing it from existing anywhere else, is that we just need to explore the universe more, and grab samples from other planets in habitable zones. I really hope that more efforts are expended towards finding simple life forms on other Earth-like planets as the fact that life seems to be found just here in a place as big and wide as our entire system (the Universe) is really hard to believe, and keeps me up at night because it’s just so weird. From what I can tell, we need deep space autonomous exploration asap.

[1] https://scitechdaily.com/nasa-uncovers-lifes-building-blocks-in-asteroid-bennus-pristine-sample/

[2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adk3208

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