Short answers, pulled from the story.
The universe burned at 10 billion Kelvin one second after the Big Bang, and it took roughly 15 million years for the cosmos to cool to temperate levels. Essential ingredients for life were absent until 50 million years later when carbon and oxygen were forged inside stars.
The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras proposed the first known mention of panspermia in the 5th century BC. He suggested that life exists everywhere and could be spread by cosmic forces.
The Fermi paradox is the contradiction between the high probability of life existing and the lack of evidence for it. Scientists have been puzzled by this silence for decades despite estimates that there are 6.25 billion life-supporting planetary systems in the observable universe.
Titan is the only celestial body besides Earth with liquid bodies on its surface. It features rivers and lakes of hydrocarbons, methane, and ethane that create a unique environment for life with a different biochemistry.
The Wow! signal was detected in 1977 and remains a subject of speculative debate. It was a brief burst of radio waves that may have come from an extraterrestrial source.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the 1979 Moon Agreement define rules of planetary protection. These agreements were established to set guidelines for interacting with extraterrestrial life and protecting celestial bodies.