Sharks are older than trees

And the north star, Polaris, is a fraction the age of sharks at only 50-70 Mya (it's a trinary star system but the other two stars are much dimmer and not visible to the eye)

I love this fact.

Also: life on earth is almost as old as the universe itself, within the same order of magnitude. 4.1 GYA (billion years ago) vs 13.8 GYA. We're old and intelligence is hard.

I think there is a theory that we’re not seeing any aliens simply because life on Earth started so early.

Or there are many planets with life, with each harboring their own equivalent to our sharks.

(And none of those shark-equivalents have developed a space program.)

There is life, then intelligent life like humans. Plus you have physical constraints like the speed of light.

I would love a "chatty" universe like Mass Effect but the problem is we'd probably be fighting Reapers

Light is slower in water. I think that explains why we are still waiting

That would be unfortunate.

I’d love to see some space sharks!

We'd almost certainly find some way to kill them if we ever ran across any of them.

We're pretty good at accomplishing things like that.

One day, there's some space sharks swimming in a sea of liquid helium and doing deep dives to get to the smaller creatures that devour the seabed of diamonds.

The next day, we're figuring out how to use space shark squeezings in our fusion reactors.

Unless, of course, the space sharks figure out how to kill us first. They will probably try if that's useful to then.

It's the circle of life.

> We'd almost certainly find some way to kill them if we ever ran across any of them

There is a credible argument that what the literature terms genocidal tendencies—where conflict isn’t resolved when it ends, but when the enemy is destroyed—is a precondition for conquering a world. So if we met space sharks, barring enlightenment, they’d probably seek to destroy us, too.

I think this is clearer:

Since we're not seeing any aliens, life on Earth must have started very early.

It’s more inaccurate as it’s stating an assumption as fact

Yes I love it too, wish more people appreciated it

That's not that early, no? There was probably enough C, H, N, O, P, S, Na atoms for life to start 10B years ago. You probably couldnt rely on iron being everywhere though but that's not such a hard requirement.

It's fascinating to ponder, for sure.

The universe still has plenty of time to burn, especially red dwarfs. It's sad to think about starless skies, though.

The heme is pretty magical. Probably not a hard requirement, but it sure has been useful for us here.

Another Fun Fact: the Appalachian mountains formed before sharks existed, the rings of Saturn existed, and before bones existed.

I think you misstated your fun fact

...but younger than the mountains. There you go!

ICYMI: https://youtu.be/IUmnTfsY3hI?si=WuUcwv_LLYh8gX4u

Good call, abc123

But they're (possibly) younger than the New River!

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_River_(Kanawha_River_tribu...>

(Blew my mind when I first encountered this a few years back.)

They've found a local optimum, and stay in it. There's no easy way out anyway.

> There's no easy way out anyway.

Evolution always finds new nooks and crannies of state space to explore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndbw7SQMCcQ

Not always, species go extinct all the time. Evolution can get stuck in local optima. Consider the whiptail lizard, which has lost the ability to reproduce sexually. Will they be able to adapt to future changes of the environment? Maybe, but the chips are stacked against them.

No one said that those nooks are not deadly. But evolution will explore them just in case.

Evolution doesn’t explore anything, mutations are random, selection pressure causes beneficial traits to become more common overtime.

Yes, but those mutations are part of why evolution works. Through random mutations, every possible way of doing something is explored. If something is beneficial, organisms thrive. If it's not beneficial, organisms die. The same is for whole species. If a species was using some niche to their advantage and the niche disappeared, the species will die. But that niche (nook) was explored.

That's what exploration looks like; mutation plus selection. I think you know this but consider exploration willful, perhaps?

Yes, that's it. I could have worded it better. My point was that it's random, evolution isn't a directed willful phenomenon but a consequence of the physical world/physics.

> mutations are random

Kind of. Mutation rate of our dna is "managed" by the dna/chromosomes/genes to reduce the rate in critical areas.

Wow what an interesting animal, haven't heard about it before.

> the chips are stacked against them.

Wikipedia says: "This reproductive method enables the asexual desert grassland whiptail lizard to have a genetic diversity previously thought to have been unique to sexually reproductive species."

Doesn't look to bad?

Sorry for the late response. I wanted to find time to do more research about this before responding but I'm gunnuh accept that it's not happening on a useful timeframe.

I'm not sure which Wikipedia article that is or if there has been revision between when you checked, I didn't find that in the Wikipedia articles for Telidae or Parthenogenesis. The Parthenogenesis article notes that it's controversial whether this is a threat to their ability to adapt.

So I may have been wrong with that example and I thank you for correcting me. I stand by the statement that evolution can get stuck in local minima but I may have been wrong about the Telidae.

I found it in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_grassland_whiptail_liza...

Yes, but maybe not from one specific lineage. E.g., extinction really is the end of the line for some species.

Sounds like working for government.

> queue the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club song

When they lose a tooth, they just grow a new one. How conveniently cool!