{"id":121074,"date":"2021-03-30T16:22:16","date_gmt":"2021-03-30T23:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/opinion-how-many-aliens-are-out-there-why-a-new-estimate-is-raising-eyebrows"},"modified":"2021-03-30T16:22:16","modified_gmt":"2021-03-30T23:22:16","slug":"opinion-how-many-aliens-are-out-there-why-a-new-estimate-is-raising-eyebrows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/opinion-how-many-aliens-are-out-there-why-a-new-estimate-is-raising-eyebrows","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | How many aliens are out there? Why a new estimate is raising eyebrows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/opinion-how-many-aliens-are-out-there-why-a-new-estimate-is-raising-eyebrows2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2018Humans are extraordinarily special\u2019. Not new but well worth remembering.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Either way, their conclusion is that, like stick-shift cars, extraterrestrial civilizations are few and far between. The implication is that our nearest cosmic chums are at least several thousand light-years away.<\/p>\n<p>You may wonder why this story has raised eyebrows. Well, it would make <em>Homo sapiens<\/em> extraordinarily special, despite the fact that the galaxy is stuffed with planets. It discomfits scientists (including me) because, historically, every time we\u2019ve thought we occupy a privileged position in the universe, we were wrong. Remember that six centuries ago, learned folk would have assured you that Earth was the center of the cosmos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Humans are extraordinarily special\u2019. Not new but well worth remembering. Either way, their conclusion is that, like stick-shift cars, extraterrestrial civilizations are few and far between. The implication is that our nearest cosmic chums are at least several thousand light-years away. You may wonder why this story has raised eyebrows. Well, it would make Homo [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":605,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/605"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}