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Paradox_Dolphin t1_jd14wfk wrote

Yeah, you're totally right. Also, it doesn't require civilization or industrialization to become space fairing. Imagine this concept:

A type of life that isn't intelligent to our understanding. They're sort of like lichen, so a lot of symbiosis with other species to create one whole. Together, over millions of years, they build massive biological structures that contain entire ecosystems and platform up to the edge of their atmosphere. (perhaps they grow towards light)

In the ecosystems on the edge of their atmosphere, their life has evolved to survive in hard vacuum, high radiation environments.

Their planet gets hit by an asteroid, sending bits of the structure out into space. Space-faring life, no civilization. (this is like the panspermia argument, except it'd be an entire complex ecosystem drifting through space instead of a few micro-organisms)

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jilljackmuse OP t1_jd15ls9 wrote

That would be very interesting, although how could we communicate with them? Would they even know we're here? Would we even know they're there?

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meat_popsicle13 t1_jd18h2p wrote

Maybe caring about those questions is a human preoccupation. Space lichens might just enjoy the sunlight and the peace of the hard vacuum. Questions are a plague of the brained.

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