Amino acids found in asteroid samples collected by Japan's Hayabusa2 probe
We again return to the rabbit hole that is the Fermi Paradox [1]. In short: there are so many stars and planets and we&#x27;ve had billions of years. Why aren&#x27;t ther emore signs of technological life?<p>A core idea of this is that there are various filters that separate a new planet from one hosting spacefaring life. There are lot of these filters proposed. One category is the Great Filter. These are where very few lifeforms are expected to pass.<p>So what we&#x27;re talking about here is an early filter where a planet forms in a relatively stable and suitable star system and single cellular life forms. Based on our own understanding of biochemistry, that pretty much requires amino acids. Now there might be other forms of life out there but they&#x27;re all theoretical. We have one which is real (ie ours).<p>We&#x27;ve had a lot of experimentals that show that amino acids can form in deep space on icy bodies. What we have here is direct evidence from an essentially random asteroid that it has amino acids on it. We can and will speculate as to the origins of these. Did they form on the asteroid? Elsewhere? When?<p>You can&#x27;t obviously draw too many conclusions from a single data point but to suggest we got <i>extremely</i> lucky to find the a super rare asteroid with amino acids on it stretches incredulity.<p>So the conditions that lead to life similar to ours forming being relatively common only gets stronger. This is similar to the number of expoplanets we&#x27;ve found. We&#x27;ve shown that planetary systems are exceedingly common, which was something we could only speculate about a mere 40 years ago.<p>More planets, more conditions for life forming. This means more species are likely getting filtered further down the chain.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fermi_paradox" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fermi_paradox</a>