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The great silence: Just 4 in 10k galaxies may host intelligent aliens
If plate tectonics, oceans and continents are rare on worlds throughout the universe, that is.
Alien life capable of communicating across interstellar space might not be able to evolve if its home planet doesn't possess plate tectonics, not to mention just the right amount of water and dry land. Plate tectonics are absolutely essential if complex life is to evolve, argue Robert Stern of the University of Texas at Dallas and Taras Gerya of ETH Zurich in Switzerland. However, despite their estimate for the number of civilizations being low, it is non-zero, and there is a school of thought that plays into the Copernican principle, which states that Earth should not be treated as special and is just another planet orbiting a humdrum star.
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