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When we first sent probes to other worlds, many people seriously expected to find life. The first astronauts on the moon were quarantined for weeks afterwards.
by Houshalter 9y ago
When we first sent probes to other worlds, many people seriously expected to find life. The first astronauts on the moon were quarantined for weeks afterwards. Instead it seems like the vast majority of space is dead.
There may be lots of other planets like Earth, sure. But that's a very different claim than "life is an inevitable outcome of thermodynamics". At best it's "life is an inevitable outcome of very specific conditions that happened to exist on ancient Earth and Earth-like planets, under specific combinations of chemicals and temperature..." You need a lot more than just thermodynamics to have life.
It's probably entirely possible to create a self replicating machine using only components found on the surface of the moon. In fact that's been a serious research project of NASA for a long time. But such a machine will never form by chance, because the probability is so incredibly small. And so the moon is lifeless.