Life on Earth Is a Second Big Bang
Originally posted on Facebook on July 7, 2018.
It seems equally likely that there is no life beyond Earth as there is. The reason is that no life has yet been observed beyond Earth, and no one understands the mechanism by which life first emerged from matter. I don't think you can assume a probability of life beyond Earth greater than zero with just a single data point, which is Earth itself.
Under this assumption, I think the emergence of life on Earth could be like a second "Big Bang" originating inside the universe itself. This process would spread an incredible diversity of life throughout the universe.
Over nearly four billion years, a single cell may have emerged, replicated itself, and spawned ever more complex life forms on Earth. This eventually led to the birth of humanity somewhere between six million and 200,000 years ago.
Humanity is the first form of life with the desire, will, and capability to replicate beyond Earth—and even create entirely new worlds.
It is not hard to imagine humanity colonizing our solar system over the course of just thousands of years, and then spreading beyond it. I can imagine human civilizations existing on worlds in galaxies literally thousands or millions of light-years apart. Assuming no transit speed can break the speed of light—no ansibles—humanity itself will fracture over time through the process of evolution on different worlds, as communication and physical intermixing between populations are totally severed. Two human civilizations just light-years apart may cease to be recognizable to one another after merely a few generations of strong evolutionary pressure.
And this scenario underplays our ability to evolve ourselves, create new forms of life like AI, or build artificial virtual worlds where intelligence can thrive.
It could also be a form of human-created AI that spreads throughout the universe instead of, or together with, humanity. I would expect fracturing in the kinds and power of intelligence that emerge, too. Maybe superintelligent AIs will populate some worlds, ordinary biological humans others, and augmented humans still others.
