The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, “If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Personally I think it’s photosynthesis. Life itself developed and spread but photosynthesis started an inevitable chain of ever-greater and more-efficient life. I think a random chain of mutations that turns carbon-based proto-life into something that can harvest light energy is wildly unlikely, even after the wildly unlikely event of life beginning in the first place.

I have no data to back that up, just a guess.

  • Brickhead92@lemmy.world
    2·
    5 months ago

    Well except, obviously, for humanity. That’s our greatest enemy, and it seems to be shown more frequently.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      5 months ago

      We would be hard pressed to end our own species either. Even global thermonuclear war would end civilization but not our species.

      • DeanFogg@lemm.ee
        2·
        5 months ago

        Edit: This mf just jinxed humanity

        Depends on the amount of nukes.

        Acidifying oceans also dares a cascading effect that would wipe us out.

        Disease.

        Also, think about globale warming. The core of the sun is 27 million degrees. 130 degrees is enough to make the surface unbearable, higher than that is going to be>!!< uninhabitable.

        Also let’s not forget space is wild, meteors or GRBs can take us out instantly

        • Spacehooks@reddthat.comEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          Universe 25 experiment. My take away from it is when society gets bored and loses goals it’s over. If the mice had some predators they probably wouldn’t have collapsed. Humans don’t have predators but have dreams that we worked toward amd stimulate us. Once we lose that it’s like what happened Walle. Stuck in a system slowly dying full of apathy.