If you could take a broad enough view, and see all the habitable planets in the universe in one frame, the tableau would appear like a scatter of sparks, glowing singly for an impossibly brief instant and then winking out. Over and over and over, these little lights briefly glow and then fade, separate from one another by such vast empty darkness that they never achieve the communion with the other that they all universally both fear and desire. And they all ask the same questions about life and meaning and why we are here and why we are alone of the cold uncaring sky in the infinitesimally brief moment that measures the span of their consciousness as a species when viewed in the impossibly long time scale that contains within it the entire span of our universe.
We are in a position to answer the riddle. The paradox is a paradox no longer, and the answer is carbon. Maybe one day somewhere the riddle will be solved and put away, but it will not be us humans who do it. We have discovered the answer, but far too late to be any use, and all we can do is watch as our destiny unfolds and our light fades out in its turn. Not with a bang nor a whimper either, just a little
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