Why couldn't intelligence also be a solar-system process?
Or a galaxy-scale process?
Or a galaxy-scale process?
There may yet be something to Teilhard de Chardin's take on the Noosphere which exists in a matrix of consciousness that spans planets, solar systems, galaxies, galaxy clusters, and indeed universes!
> The Omega Point is a supposed future when everything in the universe spirals toward a final point of unification.