Reading things like this always brings me back to the Fermi Paradox [1]. There are lots of stars in our galaxy. Our observation of many nearby planetary systems and our understanding of the chemistry of life suggests life should be relatively common but we've seen no evidence of it.
While life (on Earth) is at times incredibly resilient it's also really fragile. A supernova such as this must essentially sterilize space for light years around it and it bathes its neighbourhood in gamma radiation. Did this kill off some nascent civilization? Supernovas seem to be relatively rare (compared to the number of stars) but think: over billions of years what are the odds that such a thing--or something equally as deadly such as an asteroid or comet impact--won't happen?
Space in incomprehensibly vast. The energy required to travel to even the nearest star systems seems... prohibitive.
I'm inclined to think that there are also simply too many of us on this planet, a problem that we'll either correct or will be corrected for us as resources start to run out in the next century or two [2].
While life (on Earth) is at times incredibly resilient it's also really fragile. A supernova such as this must essentially sterilize space for light years around it and it bathes its neighbourhood in gamma radiation. Did this kill off some nascent civilization? Supernovas seem to be relatively rare (compared to the number of stars) but think: over billions of years what are the odds that such a thing--or something equally as deadly such as an asteroid or comet impact--won't happen?
Space in incomprehensibly vast. The energy required to travel to even the nearest star systems seems... prohibitive.
I'm inclined to think that there are also simply too many of us on this planet, a problem that we'll either correct or will be corrected for us as resources start to run out in the next century or two [2].
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
[2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY