Alien colony without aliens?

Do aliens 👽 exist? Are we alone in the universe 👀 ? There are an estimated 100 billion stars in each galaxy and approximately 2️ trillion galaxies in the observable universe 😲. Even assuming each star system has just one planet orbiting it, we’re looking at 2️⃣0️⃣0️⃣,0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣,0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣,0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣,0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣,0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣,0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣,0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ planets 😱😱😱. (Pheww, typing out 2️⃣4️⃣ digits is harder than you think! 😅). That’s 2️⃣ hundred billion trillion worlds! 😵 Could you even imagine that many different worlds??? Some with raining ammonia ☔️, some with diamond cores 💎, some being engulfed by their host star, and some just perfect for hosting life 🌍. Even if most of these are hostile worlds, even a small percentage of habitable planets constitute a large number, each capable of hosting life.

Why haven't we seen any? 🤔 Well, there are two main reasons: No significant evidence and not-good-enough observational capabilities. Say what? Let me explain. 🤓

👽 Even if life exists, it must have a significant presence in order to be perceived by us. If some creature is out there in the void, or even was there at some point, it must leave some clear evidence of its presence. (Basically an alien etching ‘I was here!’ into the universe). 🌌 This could be anything from simple electromagnetic waves clearly distinguishable as non-natural phenomena 📡, to even the colonization of an entire star system or galaxy! In Fact, humans as a species have already created an unmistakable mark of our presence, by sending out radio waves 📻 and other types of electromagnetic waves into space. 🚀

Secondly, with our current observational skills, we simply cannot detect microbial or even low-level life forms on distant planets because of the sheer distance that separates us. 🌟 Even to look for signs of microbial life on Mars we had to send rovers 🤖 all the way to the surface of Mars, millions of miles away from home! 🚀 All we can do is possibly identify the habitable conditions of planets 🌍 and presume that they may or may not host life. 🤔

So…no aliens? The answer is…we just don't know! 🤷‍♀️ All our observations look for signs of life similar to ours. When we say a planet is ‘habitable’, we’re indeed talking about conditions suitable to life as we know it. Truth is, for all we know, life could possibly even form under vastly different conditions, a life that vastly differs from what we’re familiar with. 🤔 Perhaps a clump of biomolecules that formed on an ammonia-rich planet would have evolved to breathe ammonia! 💨

But if alien life doesn't exist, wouldn’t that be boring? 😴 What if…we had a little fun with it? What if we made aliens? Hear me out.

There are numerous creatures on Earth that are incredibly resilient and can survive in crazy conditions too. Just take tardigrades for example. They can withstand being frozen, being exposed to high levels of radiation ☢️ and they can even survive the conditions of outer space 🚀 without food or water for long periods of time! 🕰️

What if we transported resilient creatures like tardigrades and perhaps even other low-level forms of life to planets with varied conditions and allowed them to grow and evolve there? 🚀 It's true that the first few batches of microbial life may die out, but with time it will begin to adapt to its new environment. These creatures will evolve over decades and centuries, their genetics diverging more and more from what they possessed originally.

And before we know it, mutations in the life forms will create new ones that we’ve never seen before! 🤯 We would understand evolution to a level of depth that we’ve never been able to before and perhaps it could even teach us more about how life on our own planet evolved! 🌍 And there you have it, our very own alien colony! 🤩

Check out this playlist I made containing awesome videos by Kurzgesagt!

• Alien adventure playlist

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