Jeroen said: > To throw in some science-currently-still-fiction eplanations: > > - Maybe they live in a completely different environment (FREX water). > - Maybe they are not even carbon-based but, FREX, silicon-based.
Both of those examples require elements heavier than helium, which means they require the formation of galaxies and the life and death of a lot of stars to enrich the environment enough that such kinds of life can arise, and that means that those kinds of life can only arise in universes many billions of years old. In any case, I wasn't arguing (here) that we're alone. Instead I was arguing that the apparent size and age of the universe is not a powerful argument for us not being alone, because even if we were we would still expect to see a huge and old universe. The same argument could be made by the philosophers amongst your putative aquatic of silicon-based species, of course. Rich
