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The interesting thing about this is that it could be a double whammy. The collision that formed the Moon not only made Earth smaller, it also ejected a lot of material away from the orbit. This made Earth even smaller than it would otherwise have been, had the two bodies merged. And the Moon also took up some of that mass. The Moon also causes the tides which are theorized to have a significant beneficial effect on evolving more complex forms of life.

So just being small might not be enough and having a big moon might also not be enough, but Earth was lucky enough to have both. And that’s just some of the things in a long list of things that have to go right to get complex life on a planet.

My feeling is that life is pretty rare, but given there are so many star systems in our galaxy there might be a lot of it still. But most of it is probably very simple stuff. Getting to where Earth is, might be a once every couple of millions of years event within our entire galaxy. So there really might be nothing intelligent out there at this moment in time, there might have been earlier and there might be in the future, but for right now we are it.

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MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Yup, I wonder sometimes, all those sci-fi tales about a long lost ancient civilisation that spread throughout the galaxy before everyone else did, what if we’re set to become that, before space-faring life eventually emerges, then thrives and flourishes all over the galaxy?

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- mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  What gets me are the people that insist that humans can’t be exceptional and be the first civilization in the galaxy because we’re really dumb… which is it’s own exceptionalism.
  
  If you really thing humans are ‘meh’, the solution to the Fermi Paradox that fits best is that we’re lucky and among the first civilizations. Especially when you consider that the universe hasn’t been hospitable to life until very recently
  
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- 0x0@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Try Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds, the whole series is great.
  
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  - MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Oh, thanks, will do!!
    
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marzhall@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Fun fact worth noting: humans and octopodes split back when our shared bodyplan was effectively a worm who just got legs. Octopuses have been shown to be able to learn and memorize letters, patterns, their different keepers (e.g., spitting at one particular keeper they didn’t like), etc., and all the intelligence they’ve been demonstrated to learn evolved separately from humans.

So we’ve actually got two examples of “worm with newly-evolved legs” becoming pretty damn smart on Earth, not just one - which makes my bet more on the “if the biosphere got to worms with legs, there’s a lot of smart stuff there”

A thought a friend brings up often regarding not seeing aliens is that we just might be early.

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- stoly@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I hear a biologist once say that if the octopus could live to be 80 like humans, they would be in charge of the planet instead of humans.
  
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  - Samskara@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The main disadvantage octopi have is their antisocial behavior. The parents don’t raise and teach their young. They live in solitude. The only time they spent time together is for mating, after which they die.
    
    Octopuses that can talk to each other, hunt in groups, and raise their young collectively would be pretty formidable. Even if they managed to get there, they would still be living underwater making the use of fire pretty difficult.
    
    Children of Ruin is a great book that describes a civilization of octopus, if you want to explore this a bit.
    
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  - UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Wow I had to look up their lifespan because I thought they were theoretically immortal (it was a jellyfish i was thinking of). Only 5 years and they can be this smart? The psychotic hairless apes got off easy this time.
    
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MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

And that’s just some of the things in a long list of things that have to go right to get complex life on a planet.

There’s ground bacteria that adapted to live in human-made tar lakes, digesting tar.

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