• rekabis@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    There are some schools of thought that say that a large moon like ours should be a part of the Drake Equation, because without which life would have a very hard time even on supposed “garden planets”.

    Another factor that is likely to affect civilizations is an easy source of energy, like oil. We got lucky, in that the evolutionary development in Lignin in plants - and the several million years needed for bacteria to catch up and be able to break it down - are what created those massive deposits of organic matter that became trapped deep in the Earth and modified into oil. Without that oil we are unlikely to have reached several milestones, including transportation, population levels, trade, high technology, and even access to space. And this would start affecting us several hundred years back, with steam engines.