Another flash fiction

 

Thoughts on Intelligent Life Outside the Tadpole Galaxy

It is my opinion that life will never be found on any part of the universe but our planet.

The position of our planet in our solar system, and the properties of our unique galaxy are what make life possible only here. Most galaxies are composed of a spiral of stars centred around a black hole at the centre, so massive that it would be impossible for any planet within such a galaxy to sustain life. In fact, our own galaxy also has one at its centre, but ours is the only one that has a tail that is twice the length as the diameter of the main galaxy. The position of our solar system two thirds of the way to the end, make it the ideal location for supporting life.

There have been studies as to the feasibility of life further out in the tail than our solar system, but to go into that would make for a lengthy discussion indeed. But based on those studies, as no other galaxy in the universe has been seen to have a tail like ours, it is safe to assume that no galaxy but ours can support life.

Even if life were to be found anywhere but on our planet, it’s impossible that it could develop high intelligence, as our species has. No signals of any intelligent source have been detected from our immediate sector, which for the reasons stated above, have been shown to be the only location in the universe capable of supporting life.

Our own species has the uniquely ideal physiology to develop into a higher intelligence. Our six upper limbs, each having a hand with three digits, is what gave our early ancestors the natural inclination to develop the ternary number system which we have, in modern times, found to be ideally suited to computer programming. Just suppose, for example, the furry endo-skeletal species inhabiting the great continent in the South had begun to develop the need for numbers? What sort of number system could they have possibly developed based on their four limbs each having five digits? A five based or ten based system would be cumbersome indeed, and would certainly impede any technological development. Also their manual dexterity would not have enabled them to develop technologically, or to build anything that would become the basis of civilisation. The brain would certainly not be able to coordinate that many fingers on each hand. That’s not even going into the suitability of their type of body structure, that of soft fleshy tissue supported by an internal skeletal system, which would never allow them to work with anything but soft fruit and the pliable branches that they build their nests with. Just trying to hold one of our simplest tools would puncture the soft skin on their fingers.

Those are but a few of the arguments that confirm the undeniable fact: we are alone in the universe.

Photo attribution: By KuriousGeorge - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70029204