Alessandro Morbidelli - Solar System formation and evolution
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Heidelberg Joint Astronomical Colloquium
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Excellent video. Very enlightening.
In view of the Fermi paradox, I ask myself how much the emergence of multicellular systems, which is a precondition for the emergence of a human-like form of intelligence (or so it seems from what we know of it) depended on the unique combination of contingencies which occurred in our solar system:
- no hot jupiter
- Saturn smaller than Jupiter
- random chaotic instability leading to the current positions of planets rather than a complete mess (i.e. with half of the planets leaving the solar system)
- formation of the moon by Theia's impact (critical for the stability of the Earth axis and therefore of climate on Earch).
If several of these conditions are necessary, then the probability of intelligence emerging elsewhere would significantly drop.
Finding multicellular life on the icy moons of the gas giants would of course completely wipe out the necessity for the constraints I listed here.
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