Here’s something I’ve known about for long and I see lots of scientists talking about it. A rotating ball is unstable and would kill the very life that lives on it. If it wasn’t for the moon we wouldn’t exist.
My own view is that the "Rare Earth" hypothesis is the correct one. That we are an aberration. The religious types will take this as proof that God created us.
Combine this with our DNA lineage and achievements and you’ll grasp that our existence itself has always been on a knife-edge.
If we don’t take our existence seriously … nothing like us might crop up ever again. The universe is an extremely dangerous place for life actually.
We won’t be finding aliens any time soon, and, I would argue, if we did, you wouldn’t want to talk to them. Either they would kill us, or we would kill them.
But I think we have the edge.
[This is a very important fact that scientists have known about for a long time. This is a very bizarre twist in understanding life on Earth AND finding life on other planets. The moon is a really weird object with a really weird effect. This is a fact that crops up again and again. It is a very well established fact. A planet, by itself, is too unstable for life to exist. The Moon, which is a very weird object, allows this. It's something I've known about for a long time. See the short quote from the article below. Lots of scientists have pointed this out. Jan]
Here it is:-
Moons may be essential to life
In a press release, study co-author Siegfried Eggl of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign explained further applications of the method in determining the habitability of exoplanets:
“If we can use this method to show there are other moons out there, then there are probably other systems similar to ours. The moon is also likely critical for the evolution of life on our planet, because without the moon the axis tilt of the Earth wouldn’t be as stable, the results of which would be detrimental to climate stability. Other peer-reviewed studies have shown the relationship between moons and the possibility of complex life.”
Maybe the discovery of exomoons is the first step to finding life elsewhere in the cosmos. Understanding the similarities and dissimilarities with our solar system is a great place to start.
Source: https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/exomoon-life/