Are We Alone?

The Fermi Paradox bugs me because I am not yet familiar with how one confirms the age of a galaxy. Despite many scientists using hydrogen to calculate the distance of a galaxy, and measuring the star age of the galaxy, they don't take into account the commonness of species extinctions caused from situations on that planet(there were 27+ mass extinctions so far that could have destroyed the possibility of sentient life on any other typical planet).

But still, Fermi's question remains...where is everyone?

Probably in the kitchen.

You just reminded me that my popcorn is on fire.

brb

We are alone in the universe. The only aliens are bacteria on Mars and none shall mourn when the Daystar overtakes this Insignificant Blue Planet.

There is plenty of sentient life. Sentience is overrated. A dust mite has sentience. A tree doesn't but which one lives longer?

Intelligence has all sorts of benefits, but it also leads to procrastination, depression, paranoia and even bees can suffer from these things. My amoebas seem to get along just fine without half of that intelligence.

Off world life, would we even recognize it? A virus adapts to its environment, reproduces, uses the same proteins, acids and sugars as everything else and yet apparently is not alive. But we can examine viruses directly at all levels of their operation. How do we know the sun isn't alive? No one has studied it nearly as thoroughly as the common cold, because we can't do it yet. Not only is it too hot, but its lifespan is too long. We're pretty sure it isn't, despite the use of the term "lifespan" but we also had put vaccines to use well before we knew what viruses were. People once debated that the sun was made of fire, that it orbited us, that it was the eye of some massive god. What we know and believe changes.

Maybe blackholes are some mechanism of some larger unseen system? Maybe we're part of it and don't even know it? 79% or so of matter is unaccounted for, if anything we know about gravity is correct, never mind energy. Sapience, we are alone in that. It is exclusive to human beings. But may there are other human beings? We are bags of water, mostly. We could happen again, could have happened before.

But the idea that it is ridiculous to think us alone in this universe? If there are infinite possibilities in existence, then that is indeed a possibility there isn't life beyond Earth yet, just as much as there is life being immediately beyond Earth that we don't yet recognize. As of now it does not seem particularly worth worrying about. All we can do is keep gathering information and figure out its significance as the information becomes applicable.

I know I'm not alone anyway. I have my athlete's foot, which keeps me up at night. I have countless creatures in and on me that depend on me for food and shelter. They're enough to worry about right now.