I would assume by the context that "hang" means that we have a built-in genotype that is expressed phenotypically ;-) as a need to go and explore... or in other words, a predisposition...

I'm not sure why you might assert that life would not evolve into more complex organisms; given earth's own fossil record. (Keeping in mind that life on Earth has not been the result of some accidental collision of atoms but rather a pretty inevitable thing as sure as Na & Cl do not just accidently form NaCl when in contact with each other. This last part in brackets because I may be misundertanding where your statement is coming from.)


There is nothing I'd like better than to know we are not alone in the universe. To me, if such a discovery were ever to occur... that would be the most wonderful time to be alive.

But I'm a bit "agnostic" on ET intelligence. How inevitable is it that "high level" intelligence eventually forms wherever and whenever life exists? I don't know.

But let's say, for instance, that humans never existed. Let's say that all the human precursors were also wiped out by that big meteor. Would something else, some other species, here on Earth eventually have developed the intelligence necessary to travel off to another planetary body? Like a really smart dexterous rat? Or a really smart octopus-like humanoid thingy? Wasn't there a TV series called Red Dwarf that had a humanoid cat that had evolved a few million years?

Is it always pre-ordained that planetary life must evolve human-like intelligence? Then out of all the millions of species on Earth, after all the multi-millions of years of evolution, why are we the only rocketeers?

Perhaps all that is required (of evolution) is for a species to be incredibly fit for one's niche environment. Meaning if you (or a particular species) are simply surviving to breed, then the physics of evolution is "being satisfied." There are no other biological pressures to do anything else. So evolution slows down or maybe even stops when the organism becomes perfectly suited to its environment.

Thus a shark or cockroach may absolutely be the highest form of life on this (or some other) planet, under that definition. I suppose life found near undersea volcanic vents could stay exactly as it is... "forever"... if it turned out there is not one single other more efficient reproducing organism it could turn into. So much for yearning to disperse and go explore other planets.

So what I am stating here is that there is nothing: no rule; no physical law no evolutionary requirement for human-like intelligence to develop on any given life-bearing planet. Organisms simply evolve as they do in response to their surroundings if it aids their replication.

And that's as far as it goes. Great intelligence isn't necessarily necessary.

Our own intelligence is a mere anomaly (as are all evolutionary changes, I suppose) brought on as the result of a precise and inevitable evolutionary response to a specific set of rare environmental pressures. In our case, turns out we breed better (more successfully) if we're smarter. (Up until now, anyway.)

Well, that's one possible take on the situation. And I hope it's a wrong one.

RBG