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417 points fuidani | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.393s | source
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seanhunter ◴[] No.43714467[source]
Firstly that is completely badass science. The idea that you can use observations to detect the chemical composition of an exoplanet millions of kilometres away is an absolute triumph of the work of thousands of people over hundreds of years. Really amazing and deeply humbling to me.

Secondly, my prior was always that life existed outside of earth. It just seems so unlikely that we are somehow that special. If life developed here I always felt it overwhelmingly likely that it developed elsewhere too given how incredibly unfathomably vast the universe is.

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1. hackeraccount ◴[] No.43717397[source]
My prior is that life is not uncommon in the universe, multicellular eukaryotic type life less common and intelligent (whatever that means) life less common still.

If the closest prokaryotic type life is 100 light year away then the the closest intelligent life might is pretty far away.

I base this on almost nothing - other then the time it took for prokaryotic and eukaryotic life to emerge on Earth; which to my mind is surprisingly quick for the former an weirdly long for the later.