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Just was reading an old Astronomy mag - re: spitzer detecting Hydrogen cyanide. They looked at 61 stars with dust clouds. Most of them were sun like, but 17 were smaller, cooler M and Brown dwarfs. None of the cooler stars had this chemical present. 30% of the larger, warmer sun like stars did. So that's 30% of 44, or around 13. About 20% of the original total count.
Why is this chemical so important? Because it's part of what makes Adenine, which is a required part of the basic building blocks of DNA.
I do believe that if life starts, it will eventually evolve into multiple organisms, some of which will have increased intelligence. I do not believe that humans are unique or special, nature is too varied, too inventive for this to be the case imho. What constitutes intelligence is a big question. Are we really intelligent, I'd personally say no. An intelligent species wouldn't allow a good portion of our global population to live in poverty or abuse. It wouldn't allow the unequal spread of wealth that we see. It wouldn't allow the mass abuse of our planet's biosphere either. An intelligent species would be aware of this and stop it from happening. We just don't seem to learn. It's not enough that a small percent understand this, it has to be across the board.
Dave
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