Jenifer (Zarknorph) said:

An alien super-world 110 light years away from us is the first outside our solar system to have conditions that are potentially suitable to host life, astronomers say.

It is quite exciting.

But we've still never discovered an extra-terrestial signal ... which still rather implies that we're all alone.

And very likely just about to blow ourselves up. If Trump gets his way.

I don't think we're alone.

But in order for life to have enough of a chance to evolve to the state we have, then it must be in a quiet neighbourhood.

I think the universe may have developed in this way to ensure intelligent life never encounters any other.

Jenifer (Zarknorph) said:  I don't think we're alone. 

I'm thinking we may be alone - SETI has never found extra-terrestrial communications and there appears to be no national interest in it. Not even at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Listen

Jenifer (Zarknorph) said: ... in order for life to have enough of a chance to evolve to the state we have, then it must be in a quiet neighbourhood.

I think its very possible that life develops quite easily - but it never arrives at our kind of complexity because the conditions have never, ever been right for it - great stability but just enough chaos to force development.

Jenifer (Zarknorph) said: ... I think the universe may have developed in this way to ensure intelligent life never encounters any other.

Hmmm. Intelligent life will only fill the universe if we manage to seed it ... makes some sense.

BerrySteph said:

I think its very possible that life develops quite easily - but it never arrives at our kind of complexity because the conditions have never, ever been right for it - great stability but just enough chaos to force development.

Life is very tough, yes.

But our solar system is in the boondocks of one of the spiral arms.  However our entire system revolves around that arm and every 50 million years we head into a more populated area.

Coincidentally, every 50 million years sees a mass extinction on Earth.

Also, every million years sees our system influenced by gravitational pulls from fly-by stars that tug at objects in the Ort cloud and slingshot them in towards our sun.

Last one was about... one million years ago.

Jenifer (Zarknorph) said:

our solar system is in the boondocks of one of the spiral arms.  However our entire system revolves around that arm and every 50 million years we head into a more populated area. Coincidentally, every 50 million years sees a mass extinction on Earth. Also, every million years sees our system influenced by gravitational pulls from fly-by stars that tug at objects in the Ort cloud and slingshot them in towards our sun. Last one was about... one million years ago.

I'd have to read up on that to make sense of it.

The extinctions don't really behave like that.

The blue graph shows the apparent percentage (not the absolute number) of marine animal genera becoming extinct during any given time interval. It does not represent all marine species, just those that are readily fossilized. The labels of the traditional "Big Five" extinction events and the more recently recognised End-Capitanian extinction event are clickable hyperlinks. (source and image info)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event

OMG you now scrambled my brain! I feel as if it went thru a blender to make a smoothie!