Get used to being alone
Before I get all grouchy and negative about the newly announced discovery of an Earth-like planet a mere 120 trillion miles away — practically in the neighborhood, in a galactic sense — let me say that I like space stuff. The more we learn about other planets, the more we understand about the origins of our own.
With me so far? Good. But now on to the part you’re going to hate: There is no other advanced life out there. We’re it.
Yes, that’s opinion, not fact, and no, I’m not an expert in these matters. I’m just a guy with some common sense and no burning need to believe in aliens or advanced space civilizations or any other Star Trek-y, Star War-y, Third Encounter-ish kind of thing that everyone else seems to desperately want to be true.
The newly discovered planet, called by the un-poetic name “Gliese 581c,” apparently has the same temperature as Earth and seems to have water. Maybe, as we learn more, we’ll even discover it’s even got the right combination of factors to maybe allow primitive, tiny creatures to evolve. But the series of events and steps and circumstances that can lead to intelligent, evolved life is so complicated that it’s remarkable it happened even once. We’re a lucky accident. Earth somehow hit the precise combination of distance from the sun, presence of water, atmosphere, temperature, and a countless number of other variables. Furthermore, our ace card was Jupiter, a planet of such size and gravity that it acts as a shield against asteroids and comets — which otherwise would be pummeling Earth at a rate 100 times greater than they have in the past, according to estimates. Jupiter allowed the evolutionary process to dodge disaster long enough to produce us deep thinkers.
The chance of that precise combination happening twice is something akin to two people winning the exact same amount of money in separate lotteries by picking the exact same numbers which were drawn in the exact same order. And that they lived next door to each other.
Sure, it’s theoretically possible. But damn unlikely. So it’s best if we just get accustomed to loneliness.