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Related: About this forumWhat caused the Cambrian explosion? The Economist
"For most of the Earth's history, life consisted of the simplest organisms; but then something happened that would give rise to staggering diversity, and, ultimately, life as complex as that which we see today. Scientists are still struggling to figure out just what that was."
This is relevant to the question of the development of extra-terrestrial life. There is a line of thought that says: "Simple life, probably microbial, one-cellular life may be common in the universe; but, more complex life, which could evolve upward to something that could build radio telescopes and maybe even starships, is probably rare."
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What caused the Cambrian explosion? The Economist (Original Post)
LongTomH
Jan 2018
OP
lindalou65
(253 posts)1. Cambrian
Thanks for posting. Fascinating stuff!
pansypoo53219
(20,995 posts)2. dr who answered this decades ago.
Igel
(35,356 posts)3. And recently I read something that challenged some of these ideas.
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)4. Thanks! I'll read this later!
William Seger
(10,779 posts)5. Very interesting
... but that background "music" is really, really annoying and adds absolutely nothing. Sorry for being a curmudgeon but I'm getting to the age where background noise makes it hard to distinguish words. (And don't get me started on website designers who think tiny gray fonts are really cool. )