We Are the First

Consider the following: the universe is about 13.7 billion years old (although some suggest that "light" degrades and slows, and the universe could be double that). The universe will be around 100 trillion years when it dies. Life on earth started 3.7 billion years ago. So, that means, approximately 10 billion years after the big bang, single cell life began. However, multi-cellar life didn't evolve until rather recently, 600 million years ago. These numbers seem big so let's make an analogy: if Universe was a 24 hour day, multicellular life began only 13 seconds into the day.

Crazy, right? Cosmic timescales always freak me out.

Regardless, those 12 seconds before could have given rise to the several empires that have risen and fallen. But, also consider that shortly after the big bang the universe didn't really have a lot of hospitality. On the flip side of these numbers, we exist, and if we do, others can. What if life quickly evolved into multicellular organisms giving them the leg up?

I personally think that this solution holds some weight. Even with my crude calculation above, these are estimates. The true time table could be a bit different, we don't know the survivability of the future universe when black holes dominate and iron stars are the only thing left. It's possible that life could begin on those conditions, but, as started in previous blog posts, we simply don't know what we don't know. How does life begin?

What do you think? Do you think this is a good solution? An explanation for the Fermi Paradox?