An interesting wrinkle in the Drake equation:
We are at the very center, and therefore the very oldest point of the universe.
This is no real excuse for the Fermi paradox: there’s no reason to suspect that life couldn’t evolve a tiny smidgeon faster than on Earth, what, with all the mass-extinction events we’ve had.
And no, I’m not arguing for Aristotelean cosmology.
It’s a simple quirk of relativity, that wherever an observer is that is the absolute center of the universe, and therefore the point where time has flowed the fastest, making it also the oldest point of the universe.
I knew it!
This is definitely true!
My relatives are all old as hell too!