Why The Fermi Paradox Doesn't Make Sense To Me

[ladsin]

@theflash675 and I were talking on this site a little bit after my response to a question, "Do You Believe In Aliens". I brought up the Drake Equation supporting the hypothesis that it is likely life exists somewhere outside our planet. In response he brought up the Fermi Paradox and that gave me the idea to write a little about my thoughts on it.

What is it?

The fermi paradox refers to an apparent contradiction between the probability estimates for extra-terrestrial life and the fact that we haven't yet discovered any. The argument, or paradox tends to go something like this: There are estimated to be around 300 sextillion stars in the universe. Scientists estimate that there are several hundred billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy itself, and we know that some number of these have earth like planets. If some of these earth like planets are within the right distance of a suitable star then it's possible that some life could originate on one of these planets as well. In fact it's highly improbable that only earth would have life based on these estimates. Many of these stars and planets are far older than our own, so it's also possible that life originated earlier and thus intelligent life arrived first and could have developed interstellar travel.

Thus they conclude that it's strange we haven't seen any alien life despite the fact that we're actively looking for them both through space travel, and with radio waves that we sent out around a century ago.

I personally don't find this "paradox" compelling in the slightest. I have quite a few reasons why, and because they're all connected, but I'll try to separate them into four categories. These categories are going to be Time, Difficulty of life, Size of universe, and large number of planets and galaxies.

TIME & LIFE

I think this is the biggest issue so I will address it first.

The oldest fossils we have yet found are approximately three and a half billion years old. We have to remember that the most advanced forms of life on this planet were microscopic and microbial for the first 80% of the history of life on this planet, multicellular life didn't appear until six hundred million years ago,, and they didn't even move to the land until three hundred million years ago. then out of the billions of species that evolved there has only been one that has had the capability to communicate with radio waves and they only got this capability within the last century. Thus anyone capable of having received our first radio waves would have to necessarily be within a hundred light years of us. Not only would they have to be within a hundred light years of us, but they'd also have exist at the same time. If they were too far before us they may have simply left their planet, or perhaps destroyed themselves or their planet in a manner in which only sophisticated creatures like us appear to be able to do. Not to mention that on our planet alone had five major extinction events each of which killed off 70-90% of all species that existed at that time.

So, even if life were to exist on a planet near enough to us to have received our earliest radiowaves they would still not likely be more than small unicellular creatures. Even if they happened to be multicellular they would have to beat all the odds to become a species that had the ability to use radiowaves at cosmically the exact same time as us. This is highly improbable.

Distance

Next we'll look at the staggering distance of our universe. Many supporters of the Fermi Paradox think that if there was life somewhere in the universe that they would have necessarily taken over the universe, or in some manner visited us so that we were aware of their existmience. Likewise I think those who would find this problematic are not aware of the vastness of our universe. Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in at fastest a few million years. Again, if they happened to pass by us they would have had to pass by within an incredibly small frame of time for us to have any idea of their existence. If they came from another galaxy? Even worse.

Number of Planets

Thus far we've visited two asteroids, two planets, and two moons. This may sound like a lot to some people, but this is due to a lack of an understanding of how massive our universe is. Our Milky Way galaxy alone has a minimum of a hundred billion planets. We haven't even scratched the surface of any of these, but then when we look at other galaxies we're talking about an incalculable amount of planets that we could never know.

Conclusion

There is no reason to think that we would have or should have met any other life within our own solar system, much less our galaxy. MUCH LESS any in our universe.

PS my apologies for the time delay and disconnected train of thought. I had to stop writing because I had to take my work kids camping for a week. I just came back and finished it up. Hopefully it still makes enough sense. I also posted this in religion and spirituality because the Fermi Paradox is typically brought up in creationist arguments.

[NearlyNapping]

In a way, Fermi's argument is also it's own flaw.

It starts with the vast number of stars in the universe. For example:
"There are estimated to be around 300 sextillion stars in the universe"

So the argument is that the more starts there are in the universe, the more likely it is to have intelligent life. However the more stars in the universe, the less likely it is for any intelligent species to visit/contact this specific star.

So in short, the more likely it is, the less likely it is. The two cancel each other out.

In addition, the higher the odds of there being intelligent species besides us, the higher the odds of there being multiple intelligent species.

So for an intelligent species, the odds of somehow making themselves known to another species are X. The odds of making themselves known to two species are X-Y. The odds of making themselves known to a three species are X-Y-Z, and so fourth.

Again, as the odds of intelligent life increase, the odds of multiple intelligent species also increases. Therefore the odds of contacting one particular species decreases.

[ladsin]

Thanks!

[DashboardLight]

There's a difference between humans MEETING alien life and humans KNOWING ABOUT alien life.

[NearlyNapping]

@DashboardLight

That's true. But it doesn't change anything I said. It's the same exact argument.

[hellionthesagereborn]

I also thought the fermi paradox was not much of a paradox. I would agree with all those points plus I would add two more, obstruction and motion. We have the heliosphere and the Oort cloud which can block physical objects as well as radio waves not to mention the motion of the planets and moons which could block signals coming our way.

As for motion, the fact is our planet is always rotating and we don't have recievers every where on the planet so its entirely possible a signal hit our planet square in the middle of the pacific without interceptions. The planet itself rotates around the sun so its constantly moving and the solar system itself is constantly moving within the milky way galaxy and the galaxy itself is constantly moving through space as would any other planet that could possibly be sending a signal. It would be like trying to hit a sewing needle while it was moving thousands of miles an hour while you where also traveling thousands of miles an hour, and that's honestly being generous.

[ladsin]

Ah! Thanks, I hadn't thought of that.

[hellionthesagereborn]

Not a problem.

[MsShahad]

I always find this type of discussion pointless. The truth of the matter is that there is no way to prove either side of the argument. There's always a counter argument no matter how deep you go. For instance, in your first point, you were talking about the distance that our radio waves could possibly travel. Well, what about the radio waves coming from other advanced lifeforms, why were we not able to detect them? Radio waves travel in all directions to a seemingly infinite distance. So with the vastness of the universe, surely a civilization more advanced than us that also happens to be within our proximity would have been using radio waves. Then you can argue that due to the vastness of the universe, the radio waves might have simply been not able to reach us yet. But, it is possible to travel faster than light. If they are truly that far away, then they surely must have had enough of a headstart on us to discover a way to bend space-time and warp messages through it. It just keeps going with no possible conclusion.

[ladsin]

How much do you know about radio waves?
Do you think life outside our planet has the ability to see the future or something? XD
For them to send messages to our planet within the past few hundreds of years would take nothing less than an act of god unless they spent all their time hovering above our planet watching us.

Surely, those who want to believe will choose to believe no matter what. I don't know if there's any purpose in that conversation. Some people are just confused because of a lack of information. Those people can be helped with... more information.

[MsShahad]

Radio waves are not just messages that we try to send to other life forms outside our solar system. They could also be our television shows, radio programs or even the cell phone signals, satellite signals... etc. They don't have to be directed messages. Radio waves are waves of light, they travel through space with seemingly no resistance to slow them down. So, we as a species had been effectively sending continuous streams of radio signals through space since the invention of the telegraph in the late 1800's. Now what I am saying is that a more advanced civilization (older (closer than us to the big bang)) would have been also sending continuous streams of radio waves into space. except they would have been doing it way before us. and thus their continuous stream of radio signals would have reached us by the time we discovered what radio waves are ( aka today ). So they wouldn't have to be hovering above us for their radio signals to reach us nor do they have to see into the future.

[MsShahad]

I don't know what you know what you thought you knew about Radio waves, but this is what I know.

[ladsin]

Radiowaves distort over great distances proportional to the inverse square law.
Why do you think that there's no resistance? Additionally our TV and Radio signals on earth would distort and become unintelligible from background radiation (as far as I can tell from limited research).

What are you looking at that tells you otherwise?

[Guffrus]

It is not possible to travel faster than light based on human understanding of physics currently.

Radio signals have not had time to travel far enough to be detected, at least not by a significant portion of the universe.

[Vyxzuw]

Also, the issue isn't finding life, it's finding intelligent life. Or rather intelligent enough that we can communicate and have a relationship with.

Finding bacteria would be finding life, but wouldn't really matter.

The issue then becomes, why would they want to contact us. (Since we have no real way to contact them.)
They may have a Prime Directive if they are peaceful and are leaving us to develop.
If they are interested in resources, then there is plenty of that on uninhabited worlds that getting them from ours would be a bother.
Even slave labor would be pointless as they could develop robots to do that.

Or planet itself isn't really all that special. The fact that there is life here means it can't be inhabited by alien species. This is because the life here would cause an allergic reaction. Same with us going onto an alien world with life.
Torching the planet is possible, but why would they? Then they would only be interested in the gravity and distance from the Sun. And there would be other worlds that are similar without intelligent life.

The only thing that is interesting is that we are an alien species and that we might be interesting to their scientist from a curiosity standpoint.
Or from an 'anthropological' standpoint. They way we study social behavior in animals. Which would mean they wouldn't want us to know, to prevent disrupting the study.

The scary part becomes if we become capable to travel to other planets. Because then we are a possible threat, which they may choose to deal with...

[ladsin]

True, intent is another part of the problem, but that's almost impossible to quantify so I just left it out XD

[Anonymous]

>13 billion years is plenty of time for intelligent life to have formed elsewhere.
Radio signals are irrelevant, obviously they don't go far. That's very short range and we know it. I mean it would be nice but it's not really what we're looking for.
Again, there's been plenty of time to evolve to become intelligent. So you're not looking for a response so much as you'd just expect to hear other signals. That assumes that other civilizations were broadcasting for long spans of time. They either graduated to a superior technology or died.
The time frame on it's own makes it probable, not improbable.

They don't need to have visited everywhere in the universe. What we'd look for are mega structures around other stars, dyson swarms or some manner of star farming. An interstellar civilization would cover numerous stars and with modern technology it would be *really* obvious if this was the case, particularly in our own galaxy.

There are a lot of planets, but this doesn't acknowledge how unique our solar system is. We're up to about 200+ different factors that go into a system being able to sustain life.

An optimistic estimate for the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy would be a handful. A pessimistic estimate would be far less than one per galaxy. So my answer to the paradox is that it's just really really fucking rare for two civilizations to find exist anywhere near each other spatially or temporally, or survive long enough.

[ladsin]

That and we haven't even explored.01% of our own galaxy.

[Opinion Owner]

What does explore mean in that context though?

[ladsin]

Our radiowaves have only gotten 100LY away from us. Our galaxy is 100,000LY across.
I just did a simplistic calculation to give a general idea.

[Opinion Owner]

That's not exploring though. That's outward communication.

[ladsin]

Right. We've actually explored far less.
I was giving those who accept the fermi paradox as a paradox the benefit of the doubt and counting all of that distance as having been "explored". Of course if we're talking about what percentage we've actually explored we'd be looking at about.000000000001% of our universe as we've only visited two planets and 2 moons (I also think 2 asteroids) and those we've not spent any extended period of time searching extensively.

[Opinion Owner]

If you count actually going places as explored then yeah, but that's why I ask, because I would count seeing as exploring. We can see the stars, quite a lot of them.

[ladsin]

You think seeing something as exploring it?
If I see the ocean does that mean I've explored it?

[Opinion Owner]

The part you saw, yes.

[ladsin]

That's silly. I haven't even touched the water.

[Opinion Owner]

and yet you can tell if there's land in front of you.

If you spot buildings on an island or way down a long beach then you can tell that there's civilization there. You haven't seen all the details but you can at least tell there's someone there.

[ladsin]

Sure, let's run with this analogy.
The science tells us both that there should be life somewhere in the ocean. We know that the ocean is about 140 million square miles and we can see about 4 miles away. The Fermi Paradox would be like looking at the 4 miles we can see and demonstrating consternation that we haven't found that life within our limited view of the surface of a fraction of the water.

[Opinion Owner]

But we can see a lot more than 4 miles.

[ladsin]

Not really. The horizon line is at 3miles

[Opinion Owner]

I'm saying within the context of that analogy we'd need to be able to see much father.

[ladsin]

Oh, but that's certainly not the case. Why do you think so?

[Opinion Owner]

Because we can see a lot of stars. i. e The observable universe.

[ladsin]

And you think that seeing a star is equivalent to searching it's planets for life?

[Opinion Owner]

For intelligent life, yes. Planets are small potatoes for energy hungry space faring civilizations. There's a lot more room and energy around suns. The time a species would spend confined to a planet is small relative to the duration of their civilization, that or species always die out before they start colonization space.

Stars are much better things to look at for civilization instead of planets.

[Intraluminal]

I agree with your points. Additionally, we as a species are moving AWAY from broadcasting radio signals and toward short range transmissions, cable, and lasers.

I find the extinction events particularly compelling. We live in a stellar arm near the edge of our Galaxy. It's quite likely that planets farther in a bombarded by extrastellar material. We had a recent flyby of an interstellar asteroid just a few months ago, and our system was perturbed by a small star that passed near our solar system 70,000 years ago, which is within our species's lifetime.

On the flip side, we will be able to build von neumann machines within a 100 years, and even a 10% of light speed them would fill our Galaxy within a few 100,000 years.

[ladsin]

Yep. Although I'm not sure what a von neumann machine is XD

[Intraluminal]

A VonNeumann machine is a self replicating machine. Kind of like a 3D printer that can print itself.

[ladsin]

Ah, thanks. Although I think your math is wrong. Our galaxy is 100,000 light years across.

Moving at 10% the pace of light wouldn't that then take us 1,000,000 years to get across? That's not to mention colonizing each individual planet. Let's go with the estimated 100,000,000,000 billion planets and say a stop at each would take us only 1 second. That's 32 billion years (I think my math is right on that. 1 billion seconds is about 31.7 years and I just tried to multiply that, but my math cutoff is 8th grade according to the doctor XD )

[Intraluminal]

About the colonization rate. We're within one of the spiral arms, and we would disperse radially. Further eavh probe would eject "seeds" as it flew by so no colonization time is needed. I think the number also meant most of our galaxy, so basically by spreading outward in all directions, and by dropping seeds rather than stopping to colonize, most of the galaxy would be visited/colonized with a few 100 K years since we're not starting at one "end"

[ladsin]

Sure, if we just put ourselves at the middle and spread out in every direction (we're not) we would just put the radius at 50,000 light years across and spread out in every direction at once. At a tenth the speed of light it would still take us 500,000 years just to spread to each end. Then of course the time added for stopping to seed each planet, although I presume you're saying we spend zero seconds to spread seeds to each star system?

[Intraluminal]

Yeah. Each probe that's dropped sets up a factory that sends out probes with seeds of factories. They pass by multiple star systems and drop off their probes without stopping. When they run out of probes they stop and repeat. Meanwhile their seeds that they left behind have been growing new probes and doing the same thing, so while the empty probe is rebuilding, the probes behiyit are now advancing.

[Intraluminal]

Essentially they spread in a biological fashion since WE are VonNeumann machines.

[sp33d]

Speed of light is too slow. The messages beamed out some half a century ago haven't reached too far. In general, all proposed paradoxes are based on at least one incorrect, if not false, assumption.

In this case, the probability is calculated over the entire Milky Way galaxy. However, if one calculates it for, say, a few hundred light year radius, the result will be significantly different.

Furthermore, the galaxy is constantly spinning, at quite a fast pace. Signals can be distorted by huge gravitational impact or they might simply miss the target. This is something that was not known back when "the first messages were beamed".

[ladsin]

Thanks!

[Aynsof]

Yeah the Fermi paradox is a bit... bleh
It makes a bunch of assumptions
Some of which you address here
Of course there is other life out there the universe is just simply too big for life occurring only here it is a just too far beyond any statistical probability
But that there is life does not mean that there has to be an interstellar empire existing in our timeframe picking up our signals and having both the capability and desire to come here...
So what if the milky way could be traversed in a few million years at sublight? Doesn't mean an alien race has the desire to do so and even if they did that they would not just stop here but do in the brief period we have been here and advanced enough to comprehend

[ladsin]

Sure, the desire would also be necessary, but I didn't think it necessary to add.
Good point though.

[Bubble_in_a_Box]

Why would any alien, if the species is advanced enough to be able to contact us/travel to our planet which as you've pointed out is highly improbable, want to actually visit Earth? Assuming they're advanced and intelligent enough to do all that they'd also do a little research on what they're about to step into and it's likely they'd come across all the media that portrays aliens as something to be feared. In most cases if we're not shooting at them we're trying to dissect them. Maybe there is life out there and they're staying the hell away from us for good reason

[Anonymous]

I think we might be a very special kind of stupid.

Just barely bright enough to allow the best of us to figure things out but crucially stupid enough to be exploited by others with lies and bullshit.

If we were any smarter than we are, as in Daniel Dennetts comparison of humans and chimps it wouldn't be possible to enslave and therefore harness and exploit the power of mental labour.

Violence only gets you so far, sure creating a slave to do physical work is helpful but its nothing compared to owning minds.

[Pamina]

But doesn't the paradox also assume that somewhere in the whole of our universe there must be life so far advanced that they would have already successfully found us? Or does the paradox only cover life within our own galaxy?

[ladsin]

Sure, that's an assumption that they make although all the problems of distance, specific time, and number of planets rise exponentially.

[Pamina]

That's true, they'd have to be so advanced that they somehow beat relativity.

[0112358]

Basically agree with you.

One hypothesis you might draw is that since intelligent life has probably popped up all over the universe, and before us, and we don't see it, that grand interstellar empire building may be physically almost impossible, or they'd have done it.

[ENTP_EMO]

Assume they're open the 4th dimension and travelling through time. Why would they go to us in this specific time and visit us? What makes us so special from all the many many lifeforms out there that they'll visit us?

No paradox here. Just lack of evidence. We can't even solve earth paradoxes, and they think we're ready for universal paradoxes lol.

[Anonymous]

Your numbers are off. If it wasn't for the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, there could easily have emerged a saurian biped with an enlarged brain, and they would be 60 million years ahead of us technologically speaking. And that's just on our world.

We don't have an alternate Earth to examine how likely life is or isn't.

Look up Von Neumann probes. A decent space faring race could have used these to colonise the galaxy in a mere 200,000 years or so. Given that complex intelligent life could have arisen on EARTH some time in the last 60 million years, it's not a problem to imagine life begain somewhere in the galaxy in the last 59 million 800 thousand years ago, and then spent the last 200,000 years colonsing the galaxy.

But we've seen no sign of this.

You'll just have to accept that better scientists than you have done the math, and it is a paradox, whether you can understand it or not.

[strawberrysouffle]

Dinosaurs had reached a point in evolution where they could perfectly sustain their population and dominate the Earth without needing more brain. Smarter dinosaurs didn't have a lot of advantage, and thus did they remain equally as stupid as they were in the beginning of their age. Not all living creatures become smart, in fact, we only know of one living creature that developed a lot of brain power, and that's us.
Astronomy defines 'intelligent life' as 'life forms that practice astronomy'. Dinosaurs definitely didn't do that (they would have known the asteroid was coming, it had visibly passed them a huge lot of times before it hit), and didn't have any intention of starting to do astronomy. Not every life form develops into an intelligent one.
That's part of the problem: we don't know how likely it is that intelligent life develops when there is life.

[Opinion Owner]

@strawberrysouffle You don't know as much about intelligence as you think. Latest research puts Dolphins, most corvidae, several cephalopods and elephants, all well on the way to the sort of intelligent sentience that early hominid species had. It's not as rare as you think. And we did a lot in 4 million years. I'm positing 15 times that length of time for a saurian biped.

[strawberrysouffle]

Crows are very intelligent animals, as well as dolphins, etc.
They can learn how to use tools and what more. However, they are not classified as “intelligent life“ since they do not look up at the night sky and wonder what lies beyond Earth, or what the stars are. At least, I suspect they don't. I'm not a neuroscientist, and don't know exactly how the brain or intelligence works. I do know that many animals have been populating the earth much longer than we have, and yet didn't develop into an intelligent life form.

[Opinion Owner]

@strawberrysouffle Stop arguing against things I didn't say. Strawman arguments make you look dumb.

I said that they are "well on the way to the sort of intelligent sentience that early hominid species had"

I never said they were stargazing philosophers. Jesus effing christ...

[strawberrysouffle]

I'm only pointing out that they aren't necessarily getting smarter, as the level of intelligence reached may be “sufficient“ evolutionarily speaking.

[ladsin]

Again, our radio waves haven't even covered.01% of our own galaxy. You make a lot of assumptions about what an intelligent species would do. You think they'd make big sign posts around solar systems that say, "WE WERE HERE" just in case another intelligent species came about?
Intelligence isn't sought for by evolution. We luckily ended up with it, but out of the billions of species that ever existed has what we consider true intelligence. We ourselves almost died off in our infancy getting down to only a few thousand members.
Again, we would've had to see them within the past few millenia, perhaps a hundred thousand years at latest (although we'd have no information handed down to us) and expecting that they happened to visit us in a manner which we could tell within such a short frame of time is silly.

[IconAura]

You left out a link to the video explaining what it is

https://youtu.be/sNhhvQGsMEc

here use this

[ladsin]

That could work as well, but then it wouldn't be myTake

[ThatPersonOverThere]

If any advanced species came here and saw feminists they would promptly leave before it infects their culture as well.

That aside, I don't believe that there are any single criteria for life exclusively on Earth. Surely there are at least a handful of other planets with all the "Ingredients" necessary. Given enough time they may form life as well, perhaps even intelligence.

[John_Doesnt]

The paradox simply means that everyone who disagrees with it is gay. That's what my physics professor said.

[ladsin]

Only half

[Arbus]

All the answers to your questions are here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDPj5zI66LA

[Arbus]

Basically, colonizing the whole galaxy is very easy, because growth is exponential. It would takes us approximatly one million years to colonize the entire galaxy with sub-lightspeed technology. As you know, it the cosmic scale one million years is nothing.

[theflash675]

Sorry but with these insane numbers that the drake equation sprouts out and tells us how abundant intelligent life should be there should have be at least a few signs somewhere. Its not all about radio signals and how much we have explored, but the high numbers of probabilities that should account for a large number of advanced civilizations even more than ours. If anything i'd say that with either logic you end up at step 1

[ladsin]

I just don't understand why you think that they must have visited us within the past millenia otherwise there's a paradox. The odds of that being the case out the 4 billion years that our planet has existed just seems... Strange to me.

[zagor]

And we're assuming anyone would WANT to contact us.

But given the distance and numbers involved, it really does not make sense to say "well, they should have called by now".

To bring it back to a more familiar GaG theme...

[Bandit74]

I like the way this article covers it:
https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

[ladsin]

There figures are guessing way too high. Giving each a 1% chance is incredulously high when we take into account the problems with life on even our own planet. Much less when you figure in life that may have already died out.
You have to remember as I pointed out above that our radiowaves haven't even gotten much farther than 100 LY away from our planet yet. At most SETI can hear from planets 1000 LY away.
As best we know there are only 11 planets within the habitable zones of their sun within 50 LY of us. We'll just double that to get our 100LY distance for our radiowaves. So our radiowaves have reached 22 possibly habitable planets our of the postulated billions within our own galaxy.
Even if these planets had life the vast likelihood is that they'd be microbrial and not have the capability of using radiowaves as I again pointed out above that only one species out of several billion on this planet attained that ability and at that only within the last century.

[Intraluminal]

Sorry, but " habitable zones of their sun within 50 LY of us. We'll just double that to get our 100LY distance for our radiowaves" is very wrong. You'd have to CUBE the numerous, not double it, because as the distance doubles, it doubles in ALL directions.

[ladsin]

@Intraluminal
Ah, thanks for correcting me. I forgot about that XD
Point stands though. 14'671 as opposed to 22 XD

[Bandit74]

I see your point about the radio waves being unreliable, but I dont think the article I posted conflicts with your position.

It mentioned the idea of there being 3 civilization types based on technological advancement. Statistically it seems obvious that there is other life in the universe, so the main question is whether or not there is life that has made it to type 2 or 3.
Given that there are potentially billions of planets that could have spawned intelligent life that would have had millions or billions of years more than us to advance to a type 2 or 3 civilization then there are two main explainations for why we haven't found any evidence of them:

1. There aren't any as a result of one or many "great filters" that prevent civilizations from developing to that point.

2. They exist but there are logical reasons for why we haven't found any, such as we don't have the means to detect or communicate with them given our current technology.

[ladsin]

It's possible that there are some, we just have no good reason to feel consternation about not having yet met them or heard from them.

[Zorax]

I completely agree, Fermi paradox is a delusion.
Great Take.

[Celtero]

I would be surprised if there was intelligent life other than humans in the universe... Our existence is nothing short of several miracles.

[ladsin]

The drake equation disagrees just based on the sheer mass of our universe. Even if it were only a.00000000000001% chance for life to exist there would still be a lot of life in the universe.

[Celtero]

Yeah. It still seems like a lot of things have to go right along the way. Intelligence might not even be the pinnacle of evolution, and other life might only be similar to plants and microbials.