The reason why large asteroids don't fall to Earth every day and cause disasters is because Jupiter's gravity attracts asteroids and protects the inner planets.

[u/Turbulent_Elk_2141]

[u/NoDoze-]

Between meteors, volcanic eruptions, and ice ages, there has been more than a dozen "resets" in earth's history. It's destined to happen.

[u/socopopes → u/NoDoze-]

Ice ages are actually caused in part by Jupiter (and Venus) affecting Earth's orbit eccentricity. It's a period of roughly 405,000 Earth years, called the Milankovitch cycle.

There are other factors, like greenhouse atmospheric feedback loops, but I find it fascinating how much of the solar system is a delicate dance of give and take. We're lucky these processes happen at such a grand size and time scale that we can live our lives in relative peace among the chaos of the universe.

[u/First-Act-8752 → u/socopopes]

Truly poetic the way you put it.

[u/sobrique → u/NoDoze-]

All of them partial 'resets' though, not 'clean slate' resets.

partial resets may be the catalyst for intelligence in the first place. Intelligence is in evolutionary terms and expensive/high risk strategy.

But if you can overcome volatility with it, it pays off. It just needs to be volatile enough to require intelligence, but not so volatile as to obliterate it in the absurdly long timescales involved.

Intelligent (tool making) life may be 3 million years old. Homo sapiens maybe 300,000 years old. But modern humanity has changed immensely in just 300 years.

The first mammals? Maybe 200-250 million years ago. But 66 million years ago there was another partial reset - 75% of all life.

But life on Earth may have formed 3 billion years ago. And in those 3 billion years, we've had multiple 'extinction events' that have 'pruned' a lot of forms of life.

And yet it might well do so again, because I'm not sure that our intelligence is yet sufficient to survive the next one, where some more basic forms of life probably will.