There are at least 200 billion stars in our Galaxy.  Is our sun the only one to spawn intelligent life?  Who cares – that's the wrong question.  Here is a better question:  There were at least 200 billion stars in our Galaxy before our sun even existed.  Did one of them spawn intelligent life a long time before us?  And if so, should we not expect such an ancient intelligent species to be much more advanced than we are?  Earth is 4.6 billion years old, but the universe is 13.7 billion years old.  That's a difference of 9 billion years during which intelligent life could have been evolving before earth even existed. 

 

The Building Blocks of Life

     To exist, life needs certain elements.  Among them are hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and sulfur.  Many complex life forms also require heavier elements such as iron, zinc, copper, manganese, magnesium, calcium, potassium, and sodium. 

     The first of these, hydrogen, is easy to come by.  Accounting for nearly three quarters of all atomic matter in the universe, hydrogen is by far the most common element.  Moreover, hydrogen came into existence very soon after the Big Bang.  Chances are good that early life did not suffer from a lack of hydrogen.

     All the other elements necessary for life came on the scene somewhat later.  They were the product of nuclear reactions deep inside large stars, which dispersed their payload of life-giving elements across the vast reaches of space by means of massive stellar explosions called supernovae.  These supernovae debuted about 400 million years after the Big Bang.  They were formed from colossal hydrogen gas clouds that had self-compacted under the force of gravity.  The gravity was so intense that it compressed hydrogen atoms together, making new atoms that were larger and heavier than hydrogen.  This is called nuclear fusion.  As Carl Sagan explained it,

 

Hydrogen fuses into helium, helium into carbon, carbon into oxygen… all the way to iron.[1] 

 

In extremely dense hot stars, silicon burns to create iron, and in lesser quantities, the elements of intermediate weight between silicon and iron.  Among these are the life-giving elements phosphorus, sulfur, potassium, calcium, and manganese.[2]

     After only 10 million years or so, the massive stars blew apart in supernovae, scattering their diverse treasures of elements far into space, where they were subsequently incorporated into future solar systems, such as ours, which are rich in these heavier life-giving elements.  In supernovae explosions, large numbers of neutrons are released from the interior of the star.  They use the energy from the blast to fuse with iron atoms, thus forming elements heavier than iron.  Among these are nickel, copper, zinc, silver, tin, iodine, platinum, gold, mercury, lead, and finally uranium.  At uranium, the elements become unstable and radioactive, the nuclear fusion process stops, and radioactive decay begins.[3] [4]  When this radioactive uranium is subsequently incorporated into planetary bodies, it, together with gravity, causes volcanic and geothermal activity, which is essential to life, because volcanic activity is necessary for the creation of an atmosphere.[5] 

     Hence, the massive hydrogen supernovae stars of deep antiquity were the first vital step toward the evolution of life, because they seeded the universe with the elements necessary for life.

     Stars similar to the earliest stars still exist today, because there are still so many clouds of hydrogen collapsing into balls of burning gas.   Two stars in particular, HE1327-2326 and HE0107-5240, have been extensively analyzed under telescope.  These two stars have created a large amount of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen.[6] [7]  Hence, those stars in the first and second generation with a mass twenty times larger than our sun are empirically demonstrated to have seeded the universe with carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen.[8]  Sodium, magnesium, and aluminum may also be made inside these stars,[9] together with a large quantity of phosphorus.[10] 

 

How Soon Did Life Evolve in the Universe?

     The first supernovae stars began to exist about 400 million years after the Big Bang.  From birth to death, these stars only lasted about 10 million years.  The universe is 13.7 billion years old.  If you could fit 13.7 billion years into a 24 hour day, then 10 million years would be just one minute.  410 million years would be 43 minutes.  So in astronomical terms, if the lifetime of the universe is compared to a single day, all the elements necessary for life were spawned within the first hour of that day. 

     Moreover, heavy organic elements tend to sink toward the center of the Galaxy, so we should expect life to emerge first toward the central core of the Galaxy – perhaps not directly in the central core, because of the frequency of collisions, but rather just outside the central core.  Yet earth is more than half-way to the outer rim, which means we are comparatively lacking in organic elements.  Since the earliest possible date for life is dependent upon the calculation of the earliest date that heavy organic elements were available in sufficient quantities, it is very likely that regions more toward the center of the Galaxy produced life at an earlier date than our earth did.  This fact significantly reduces earth's chances of being the first planet to produce intelligent life in our Galaxy.

     The pertinent question is this:  At what time in the history of the universe did the life-giving elements become common enough for life to first evolve?  Measuring the occurrence of iron is a good benchmark by which to answer the question.  The iron content of stars is comparatively easy to establish because it exists throughout the universe in sufficient quantities to measure.  Also, iron is one of the heaviest, and therefore one of the last of the organic elements to fuse.  Where iron is present, the other life-giving elements are also likely present. 

     Iron rich stars emerged early in the history of the universe.  A sample of 462 single F and G class stars (that is – stars similar to our sun) studied by Nordstrom suggest that iron rich stars appear to have existed very early in the history of the universe, and have remained more or less consistently present in the universe at a surprisingly stable distribution.  The first iron rich stars appeared at approximately 13 billion years ago, and a substantial number apparently existed about 11 billion years ago.  Nordstrom remarks,

 

There is clearly no significant rise of overall iron abundance ([Fe/H]) with time.[11] 

 

The rapid creation of iron, which occurred during the youth of the universe, may be a function of the fact that the early supernovae had relatively short life spans compared to our sun, many just 10 million years or less.  Consequently, the first few generations of stars came in rapid succession, seeding the universe with large amounts of iron and other life-giving elements even while the universe was still quite young.  Even the proponents of the Rare Earth Hypothesis admit that the universe was seeded with a sufficient quantity of life-giving elements just 2 billion years after the Big Bang.[12]

          Therefore, stars capable of producing life appear to have been just about as plentiful 11 billion years ago as they are today. Insofar as our sun is about 5 billion years old, and life first evolved no later than 1.5 billion years afterward, we may reasonably postulate that simple life forms first evolved 1.5 billion years after iron-rich stars became plentiful.  In other words, simple life forms similar to bacteria probably first evolved about 9.5 billion years ago, at the latest.    

But when did intelligent life first evolve?

Read more about the evidence for why intelligent life most likely evolved before us and most likely has visited us.

The creationist narrative in Genesis 1 is contradicted by many ancient Christian texts.  Instead of an Almighty Creator God, ancient Christian texts espouse that the universe is born from blind arrogance and stupidity.  The angels caused evolution to occur from species to species.  There are many gods, (or aliens?), and the Christian God is just one among them.  Satan the Devil writes scripture, and thus the Bible was polluted with Genesis 1.  Archaeology and modern scholarship demonstrate that Genesis is indeed corrupted.  Cavemen walk with Adam and Eve.  Esoteric prophecies reveal the coming of Christ, and also reveal the dark forces that govern the cosmos.  Such are the ancient Christian writings.

Science vindicates the truth of these ideas.  Evolution often happens too fast for Darwin’s theory.  Gaps in the fossil record indicate that some kind of unnatural force acts together with natural selection.  Astrobiology reveals that intelligent life probably evolved long before us.  The fossil record reveals strange clues that aliens abducted species and transported them across oceans, and that DNA from diverse lineages was combined to spawn hybrid species.  Evidently, aliens influence evolution, and they are the gods of the world’s religions. 

This is not fiction.  All these facts are thoroughly documented in the links above.

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