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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Maybe look for signs of chemistry that indicates industry? Teflon, by-products of steel-making, plastics, something like that? Signs of intelligent(?) life.

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Chemistry that indicates industry is signs of industry. In earth timescales, industry existed for effectively 0% of the time. Life existed for significantly longer though.

Even if there's life in lots of places, there may be no industry as we understand it anywhere else in the universe.

The thing we keep on neglecting to mention is that life on earth actually happened pretty quickly in the time scale of the universe. I can't remember but I think we're one of the earliest points for life in the "broad" time scale. I wouldn't be surprised if stastically we're some of the first intelligent life, or the first wave.

Actually, we're already past the peak of star formation in the universe. So the universe is well on its way winding down.. less and less stars are being created. We're seeing the universe more middle aged than especially young

https://www.reddit.com/r/space/s/0oVjIo0XMi

But how many of those stars would have been suitable for life ?

A huge star that’s going to burn out quickly isn’t conducive to complex organisms

Also in a huge star there’s less material to form planets in the first place

There's talk of 'forever chemicals' produced by everything we do. Is evidence of industry going to just disappear? Forever is a long time.

This is why "forever chemicals" is a poor term for those pollutants. They take a long time to decay under natural conditions (kind of like nuclear waste) but they don't literally persist forever.

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