Are Humans the Real Ancient Aliens? - NBC News
http://www.nbcnews.com/mach/space/are-we-ancient-aliens-n695456
By Seth Shostak
How special are we? A recent research paper suggests that terrestrial-style biology may be rare, and Earth may be
among the first examples of a planet able to sustain life in the cosmos. Even as the new kids on the block, humans are
seemingly one of the precious few instances of intelligence to arise in the universe since the Big Bang did its thing.
Harvard Astronomer Avi Loeb and his colleagues in the U.K. have argued that the halcyon days for life are still to come.
It's not even morning in the universe; it's pre-dawn. Biology may erupt like weeds on an untold number of worlds, but
if so, the infestation will take place tens of billions of years in the future.
Why's that? And what's wrong with life sprouting up today?
Obviously nothing. After all, you're reading this — you, the distant descendant of a small collection of molecules
that stumbled on a method for building nearly exact replicas of itself nearly four billion years ago. No scientist
is yet sure if this molecular sleight-of-hand is just some sort of highly unlikely event, although opinions abound.