Intelligent life may exist elsewhere in the cosmos from "summary" of Cosmos by Carl Sagan
The idea that there might be other beings as clever or cleverer than we are, inhabiting some other world in our galaxy or beyond, is one that has long fascinated us. It is a wonderfully liberating idea. It means that there is a great diversity of ways of being intelligent. It means that intelligence is not a parochial and narrowly human characteristic, but is shared by many kinds of beings. It means that we are not alone. It is a perspective that provides new meaning to the biblical phrase "In the image of God." We are a very young species, in geological terms. If we shared a single day with all the other creatures of the Earth, mammals would have been here since about 11:45 p.
m., reptiles since about 11:59:35 p.
m., and humans since only the last 20 seconds. This may suggest that other civilizations, if they exist, might be millions or billions of years older than we. Their technologies might be as far beyond ours as ours are beyond the chimpanzees.
The key question is: What is the probability that other intelligent civilizations have arisen elsewhere, especially in the billions of other galaxies that we cannot see? The emergence of life, not to mention intelligence, is probably a highly unlikely event. Yet, given the enormous number of planets, the vast amount of time, and the high probability that chemistry and physics are universal, it seems almost certain that life, and perhaps intelligence, occur on many worlds. But the distances between the stars are so vast that a civilization capable of interstellar communication, let alone interstellar travel, would have to be thousands or millions of years in advance of us.
But the real issue is the impact on us of the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence. It would be the greatest discovery in the history of our species. It would mean that there is a hope for us. It would mean that there is a way of avoiding the self-destruction that we are so painfully familiar with on Earth. It would mean that there is something to strive for. It would mean that there is a future.
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