First images from Euclid are in

So many solar systems out there, life evolved in many planets for sure. No proof but no doubt.

Life? Probably. Something that has thinking capabilities? Much more doubtful.

One proof is that we are thinking, and so are dogs, cats and monkeys to a lesser extent.

That's Earth. There is no model to say that life always goes on that way. We just have no clue.

"Astronomer Frank Drake created a formula to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way. Adam Frank and Woodruff Sullivan modified the equation to calculate the odds that Earth was the first intelligent life in the universe. They concluded that the odds of Earth being the first are less than one in 10 billion trillion, which suggests that other intelligent species have likely evolved."

1 in 10 billion trillion is some pretty serious odds.

It does get more complicated if we factor in life happening quickly enough without an extinction event.

But after looking at images like this there is just NO WAY we are the only ones.

I don't really doubt that life with human-level (or greater) intelligence has evolved at least a few times.

What I'm more pessimistic about is how long such intelligence might live. How many civilizations reached a point of harnessing nuclear power and then wiped themselves out with nuclear war?

I think even that's perhaps a warped anthropocentric view of intelligence?

Think about other earth-centric scenarios, and try and imagine if dolphins or octopuses or fungus or maybe even insect colonies or plant ecosystems had "won" and become the apex lifeforms on earth instead of humans. I wonder just how different concerns like "civilisations" and "war" and "nuclear power" would have played out in those cases? I wonder if assumptions like "industrial revolutions" and the inevitability of scientific discovery being used in detrimental ways like we have done with nuclear science actually correlate with "intelligence"?