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92 points bikenaga | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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echelon ◴[] No.44503282[source]
Imagine if life had evolved on Earth or Theia prior to impact. Imagine if it was intelligent and played witness to the giant cataclysm.

Given that intelligence took an awfully long time to emerge from LUCA, that seems implausible. But it's fun to imagine pre-Theia "Silurians". That sort of impact would have scorched earth of any trace or remnant of their existence. It feels as though there must be sufficiently advanced civilizations out there witnessing this exact scenario play out without the necessary technology to stop it. Though that fate would be horrifying.

Another thing to think about is that shortly after the Big Bang (if there was one, Lamda-CDM or similar models holding up), was that shortly after the Big Bang the temperature of the early universe was uniformly 0-100 degrees Celsius. It may have been possible for life to originated in this primordial interstellar medium without even so much as needing a host planet or star! Just life coalescing in space itself.

That early primordial soup, if it existed, could have seeded the whole universe. Most aliens might have matching molecules and chirality if those decisions predate our galaxy.

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1. SideburnsOfDoom ◴[] No.44508406[source]
> Imagine if life had evolved on Earth or Theia prior to impact.

There's good reason why this first era of Earth's history is called the "Hadean eon" - as in the fires of hell.

> Throughout part of the eon, impacts from extraterrestrial bodies released enormous amounts of heat that likely prevented much of the rock from solidifying at the surface. As such, the name of the interval is a reference to Hades, a Greek translation of the Hebrew word for hell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadean

https://www.britannica.com/science/Hadean-Eon