So far so good.

But you somehow extended from this to, “And this is significant in the history of the universe”. Unfortunately, it might just be a flash in the pan.

The Fermi Paradox asks, “Given that we’re a very young star and the galaxy was ongoing a billion years before our solar system even formed, where is everyone else?”

There are two good answer to this.

Answer one is that life, while clearly not impossible, could be so rare that we are “the only ones” — at least, the only ones close enough to interact with.

Answer two is that when an intelligent species appears, it inevitably kills all its natural predators, and its population grows exponentially until it irreparably fouls its ecosystem and exhausts its resources.

I suspect both answers might be true.

I thought it was in Gödel, Escher, Bach, but apparently not, where someone described the universe as a million years of patternless noise, five seconds of Bach (i.e. humanity), and then noise and static again for all eternity.

It’s a terrifying thought, and yet in some ways it makes our temporary existence even more awesome that it was before, if that existence does not, in the end, amount to a hill of beans.