There was a time, not long ago, when we believed Earth was unique. The only place with oceans, clouds, or carbon-based life. We imagined ourselves as the centre of everything special. Chosen, even. But we now know there are likely five planets for every star in the Milky Way, and with around 300 billion stars in our galaxy, that gives us a ballpark figure of 1.5 trillion planets swirling through this spiral of dust and confusion.
And we’ve barely looked at a thousand of them.
Yet, on one of those, K2-18b, a super-Earth just 120 light-years away, the James Webb Space Telescope recently detected a molecule we’ve only ever seen produced by life here: dimethyl sulfide (DMS). On Earth, it comes from plankton, tiny, ocean-drifting organisms that don’t know they’re historic. And yet their chemical fingerprints might now be the first whisper we’ve received from another living world.
That changes everything. Because if a signal like this shows up so early in our search, life probably isn’t rare. It’s likely common. Not a miracle, but a consequence.
It’s often assumed intelligence is the outlier. Earth just got lucky with us, the right spark at the right time. The evidence says otherwise. On this planet alone, intelligence has evolved many times. If Homo sapiens hadn’t evolved, it could have been Homo Denisovan or Homo Neanderthalensis.
Even weirder, it’s possible that whales or dolphins or elephants, crows, or pigs would have. Nature kept trying. Again, and again.
Crows shape hooks from twigs to dig out insects and have been known to drop nuts on busy roads, waiting for traffic lights to change so cars can crack them open. Chimps make spears to hunt bush babies and use stone tools to crack nuts in rituals passed down like family secrets.
Pigs can operate joystick-controlled video games, (true), and seem to grasp basic symbolic logic. Parrots have shown signs of sentence-level language comprehension. Orcas coordinate complex hunting strategies, learn from each other, and even invent regional dialects. Wolves problem-solve in packs, and some domestic dogs have vocabularies of over 200 words.
And octopuses, our favourite wet-world aliens, can unscrew jars, escape sealed tanks, and show individual personalities. Some even appear to play. (Watch My Octopus Teacher. Fascinating!)
This isn’t intelligence as an accident. It’s intelligence as a pattern. Evolution keeps heading in that direction, often in a drunken line, but with clear intention. So maybe intelligence isn’t as rare as we think. Maybe it just takes time, and the right pressures. Given the scale of the galaxy, there’s been plenty of time, and more than enough worlds to try.
What this means is simple, and staggering: if life starts easily, and intelligence emerges repeatedly, then our galaxy may be teeming with minds; some curious, some cautious, and some perhaps already timeless. Maybe they’re listening. Maybe they’re watching. Or maybe they’re just starting out, unaware of us, fumbling with fire or radio or TV remotes like we once did.
Of course, not all intelligence leads to kindness. Evolution rewards survival, not sentiment. We assume aliens will be wise or peaceful because we so want them to be. But nature has no such obligation. Just as we grew with our dreams, we did it with weapons in hand. So might they.
Still, despite all the fear, despite the silence, we keep looking. Because the truth isn’t just scientific. It’s emotional. We want family, we want friends, we want to know we’re not alone.
And maybe, just maybe, we never were.
What do you think? Is life everywhere? Is intelligence common, or are we the accident?
I'd love to hear your take.
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