[ExI] Some thoughts on the Fermi Paradox

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 7:00 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 4:14 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> *> I've seen estimates that life could have started a billion years
>> earlier than it did on earth (and possibly earlier). *
>
>
> *The Earth formed 4.54 billion years ago and life existed 4.1 billion
> years ago, and incredibly there is some evidence it may have existed 4.48
> billion years ago. The emergence of liquid water existing on the surface
> and the emergence of life seems to have occurred almost simultaneously.
> Since we have only one example to work with we don't know if that is
> freakishly early or is normal, but we do know that life couldn't have
> started much earlier.   *
>


I was talking about other planets and solar systems besides Earth.

See:
https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/19544/intelligent-civilizations-roam-galaxy-5-billion-ago#:~:text=Using%20astronomy%20and%20statistical%20modeling,have%20graced%20the%20Milky%20Way
.

"Using astronomy and statistical modeling, they found that the probability
of life emerging based on these factors peaked at around 8 billion years
after our galaxy formed, or 13,000 light-years away from the galactic
center. By comparison, human civilization arose on the Earth's surface
around 13.5 billion years after the Milky Way formed,"


> *> The limiting factor being the metallicity of stars (which requires
>> several generations of stars to have lived and gone supernova). I think
>> also the speed of evolution is variable and depends on things like the
>> amount of habitat, abundance of resources, etc. A lot of it may also be
>> purely random luck.*
>
>
> *I agree with all of that. *
>

Great.

Jason

>
> *John K Clark *
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20260127/f637635d/attachment.htm>