People are often quick to accept that intelligent life is ‘out there’ based on the size of the galaxy, but resistant to how ancient intelligent life probably is based on the age of the galaxy.


The predominant age of the universe according to astronomers is 13.9 BILLION years give or take 200 million.

Humans are not even 1 million years old as a species. If an intelligent life within traveling distance emerged 1% faster than us, they would already be 13,900,000 years old. And that is just 1%. What if an intelligent life emerged 50% faster, on planets orbiting stars that no longer exist? They would be 7 BILLION years old.

We humans literally just got here, and there is growing speculation it was not even by chance.

I would say the odds here are that space has been full of intelligent life and for a very long time.

submitted by /u/DoNotPetTheSnake
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