Member-only story
Signs of Life in Space
Life is binary. It either exists or it doesn’t. The Earth is alive, as is the whole universe. In searching for signs of life, we conveniently ignore these facts. Stars and their planets are symbiotic partners, their respective masses acting to massage the other and keep each partner vital. They inhale and exhale. They burp and fart. These are all signs of life. Just because we can’t shake hands with a thing doesn’t mean it isn’t alive. Amoeba are alive, too. The concept of Being doesn’t come with a floor or a ceiling. It only comes with an On/Off switch.
Statistics favor the belief there are other living planets out there. Which is not to say that every living planet is like Earth, or that any of them could support an ecosystem as complex as ours. It would be unreasonable to define our planet as typical. The Earth is atypical. For other planets and stars to exist at all is an obvious sign of our galaxy being a living organism. Looking out from the galaxy we see other galaxies, in various stages of development, telling us that everything we can see in the universe is alive. We don’t know what’s going on inside other galaxies. Being situated in a safe zone at the outer edge of one of its sweeping spirals, we don’t know for sure what’s going on deep inside our own Milky Way. We don’t appreciate how dangerous it is to have beings the size of a solar system running around making nuisances of themselves. It…
