Diverse Microbial Life Forms Existed At Least 3.75 Billion Years Ago, Study Confirms. A variety of microbial life may have existed on primordial Earth, potentially as little as 300 million years after the planet formed. These findings have implications for the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

I think, if this proves correct, it just reinforces the idea that intelligent life is *hard*. It took 3.75 *billion* years for a species capable of developing advanced technology to appear.

theStormWeaver

I am absolutely fine with with the knowledge that I may have evolved from otherworldly alien goo

kerpwangitang

All the dates of the most important milestones in earth’s history (formation, first life, first pluricellular life, first plants, first land animals and so on) keep getting pushed back as research improves. I wonder how that’ll look in 20 years

Jesse_etk

My personal belief/theory is that microcellular life is common anywhere liquid water exists (I think Europe’s red streaks on its icy surface has microbes) The problem is that I think multicellular life, and by extension organized sentient life, is exceedingly rare and we must be spread so far apart due to the distances of millions of light-years that we cannot detect any sign of life.

Sairoxin

This is making life on Europa or Enceladus look more likely.

Ad_Honorem1