We live in a universe where matter is distributed in a hundred billion galaxies, each containing a hundred billion stars, made up of particles, such as electrons and protons, or as waves or quantum strings. Tucked into the 14-billion-year history of this vast observable universe with 100 trillion planets is a pale blue dot teeming with life and a technological civilization composed of a strange species known as homo sapiens.
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In contrast to Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb’s optimism that extraterrestrials are less speculative than dark matter or extra dimensions, a study posted in September of 2018 conducted by three scholars from the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at Oxford University, suggesting that although we exist in a universe with a potential 50 quintillion habitable planets, the expectation that life — from inorganic to bacteria to sentient beings —abiogenesis– has or will develop on other planets as it has on Earth, might be based more on optimism based on a sample of one.