The search for alien life must heed this lesson from Stephen King | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Oct, 2025
In 2025, Earth remains the only planet where life is known to exist. Without a second example, “The Stand” has a vital lesson to teach us.
Here on Earth, at least 3.8 billion years ago and perhaps even earlier in our planet’s history, life emerged on our world, and has persisted ever since. We’ve had photosynthetic life for at least the last 2.7 billion years. We’ve had eukaryotic life, with differentiated organelles inside its cells, for more than 2 billion years. Multicellular life and sexual reproduction have been around for over a billion years. And plants, animals, and fungi all emerged more than 500 million years ago. More recently, our own species emerged on Earth: not only intelligent, but technologically advanced, transforming our world and having taken our first steps into space beginning in the 20th century.
Uncovering this story, coupled with the recognition that the raw ingredients that led to life on Earth are found in billions of star systems across our galaxy and in trillions of galaxies across the observable Universe, has led to some tremendous questions and some equally tremendous speculations.
- How many other worlds in our Solar System had life arise on them?
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