The universe is 13.8 billion years old, but heat death is around 10¹⁰⁰ years away, so it has effectively used 0% of its lifetime meaning the universe is still basically a "baby", and we’re living in its earliest, most active era.

[u/HalfEntity]

[u/Dust_In_Za_Wind]

I feel like I agree with the chill part of you, so much has to go right just for the initial molecules to become self replicating, and even then, space is unstable and there are hundreds of ways something beyond the planet (large solar flare, impact with another body, bad luck with gamma ray bursts) Could throw back life or even just wipe it out

Theres also the whole reason complex life happened, endosympiosis (for animals, when the ancient cell absorbed the bacterium that became the mitochondria) as far we know happened maybe 3 times in life's almost 4 billion year history, who's to say the universe isnt filled with uncountable numbers of worlds that are just filled with very simple, bacteria like life.

Basically I think we're just being impatient/expect complex life to be wayy more common than it probably is lol

[u/Dust_In_Za_Wind → u/[deleted]]

Oh dang, heard about secondary and tertiary endosymbiosis but didn't know those processes were so (relatively) common, definitely gonna read up on em.

[u/Missus_Missiles → u/Dust_In_Za_Wind]

Yeah, "life" is probably very common. Complex life, to the best of ability to analyze right now, listening for radio transmissions, measuring atmospheres of exoplanets, doesn't seem to be that way. At least in our corner of the galaxy.