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And earth has been around for 1/3rd of the current age of the universe. As far as things go it's pretty old. Add to that that we probably aren't as "normal" as

And earth has been around for 1/3rd of the current age of the universe. As far as things go it's pretty old. Add to that that we probably aren't as "normal" as we initially believed. A solar system with small rocky planets on the inside and big gas giants on the outside seems to be the exception and was very important for earth's development. Then there's the above mentioned "void" we are in, and probably other things we don't realize yet. There's a really good case that we are among the earliest spacefaring civilizations

Teever 2y ago
> A solar system with small rocky planets on the inside and big gas giants on the outside seems to be the exception Is this actually the case?
- defrost 2y ago
  They haven't cited a source or their reasoning, I would guess they mean "seems to be an exception by observation" Emphasis on "observation". Currently we infer planets that orbit stars that are extremely distant by starlight dipping in intensity .. this is a method that works better with larger planets and that skews the results of observing distant planets. We have observed some small rocky earth like planets IIRC but these are rare, observations perhaps due more to luck in looking than frequency of existence. This is the crux of the problem; does the distribution of planets we observe match the distribution of planets that exist?