Before we begin, I’d like you to take a moment to watch this incredible little GIF.

In the last 100 or so years, science has enlightened us to a frightening truth: we’re small, in every sense of the word. I call this fact frightening because to many, that’s just what it is: scary. For thousands of years, we as humans have searched for the meaning of life. Many find meaning in religious beliefs; others, in making the world a better place. But one thing that nearly all people share in their quest to find meaning in life is their main search parameter – Earth itself. I say this not as a criticism, for how could I? One can hardly be expected to look outward from where they are attempting to find meaning as a way of finding it. But modern science has illuminated just how constricted this Earthly search parameter is, and it’s worth exploring what this newfound viewpoint might mean in the never-ending human search for meaning in a seemingly random universe.

Allow me to go in a semi-random direction for a second – I promise you’ll see why in just a minute. OK? Cool.

Let’s talk aliens. I’ve mentioned the Drake Equation before, but this time we’re gonna go a bit more in-depth on the subject. Essentially, Drake came up with a rough way to calculate the number of active civilizations there should be in the Milky Way. The equation looks like this:

Don’t worry, it’s not as scary as it looks. N represents the number of radio-communicative civilizations in the Milky Way, and the rest of the values represent numbers ranging in scope from the rate of star formation in the galaxy, to the fraction of stars with habitable planets, to the fraction of habitable planets that actually develop intelligent life. These numbers are highly speculative, and I don’t suggest taking any as scientific fact. However, they do allow us to figure a rough estimate for how many civilizations there should be.

The key word here is should. The equation is probabilistic, meaning that any results derived from it are only the most likely solutions. In essence, probabilistic arguments can tell you what will probably happen, but not what always will. Random chance is just that – random. Each iteration of the event is independent of the ones before and after it, meaning that no matter how times in a row your quarter has landed heads, the next toss is always fair.

If we apply this principle to the Drake Equation, it actually becomes possible to produce an answer of 0. Since each variable is a probabilistic value, theoretically, they could ALL be 0. The odds of this are extremely unlikely – just imagine flipping a coin 1000 times, and getting tails on every toss.The odds might be incredibly low, but they aren’t zero. And they never will be, no matter how many tosses are made.

Now, there are times when the odds of something may be so low as to be negligible, as in the case for the coin toss. But in the Drake Equation, we have no way to prove that the odds of a 0 value are negligible. We simply do not have enough information about the creation of life to accurately speculate on the odds of such an event. Who’s to say that life must develop where the conditions seem right? Although evolution describes the process by which life changes once it has been conceived, biologists have yet to determine what critical event must happen to make inanimate molecules organize into self-replicating organisms.

There are plenty of reasons to believe we are not alone, despite the fact that we lack the knowledge of how we came to be. Humans, and in fact all life on Earth, are carbon-based, an unsurprising fact given that carbon can bond to create more distinct molecules than every other element combined. We are also made up of the four most abundant elements in the universe (hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen), excluding chemically inert helium. It would appear that we are an opportunistic result of random chemical processes; yet, we still do not possess the knowledge to confirm this as fact.

So, then, we come back to the Drake Equation. The odds for a 0 might be impossibly slim – yet everyday, somebody, somewhere wins the lottery. What’s to say our universe didn’t win the lottery? In my view, of course, being alone would be the farthest thing from winning the lottery – but you get my point.

The fun part of this line of thinking is that it leaves open the possibility that we are indeed alone in the cosmos. And this brings us back to our original inquiry: taking the human quest for a meaning of life outside of our traditional Earthly parameters. Knowing what we do about the breadth of the universe, we now hold a heavy torch which burns bright against the darkness of the cosmos – the torch of knowledge. As far as anyone can tell, we are the only ones to carry this light against the vast and endless universe. If we allow ourselves to be overcome by petty strife, by violence and human conflict, this torch may be extinguished forever. The universe may lose its only chance at uncovering its deepest secrets. It would be sinful of us, as humans, to squander this enormous opportunity under the assumption that “someone else is probably doing it too.”

So the next time you begin to question the meaning of life, consider the fact that you might be a member of the only sentient species in the universe. Question everything; who knows? We might just be the only ones who can.