'One hundred billion trillion' planets where alien life could flourish

[n2doc]

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent in Chicago
Last Updated: 12:05PM GMT 15 Feb 2009

Life on Earth used to be thought of as a freak accident that only happened once.

But scientists are now coming to the conclusion that the universe is teeming with living organisms.

The change in thinking has come about because of the new belief there are an abundant number of habitable planets like Earth.

Alan Boss, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, said there could be as many Earths as there are stars in the universe - one hundred billion trillion.
Because of this, he believes it is "inevitable" that life must have flourished elsewhere over the billions of years the universe has existed.

"If you have a habitable world and let it evolve for a few billion years then inevitably some sort of life will form on it," said Dr Boss.

more;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/4629672/AAAS-One-hundred-billion-trillion-planets-where-alien-life-could-flourish.html

[w4rma]

1. Including Mars, apparently. (nt)

[BlooInBloo]

2. Until someone measures the size of evolutionary search space, nothing can be said...

about the probabilities.

[mike_c]

3. more and more I think that life is a general emergent property of matter...

...under at least certain circumstances, and maybe under far more circumstances than we can presently model. I wonder whether life might be an inevitable consequence of information storage and propagation-- that certain types of information propagation lead to self-organized matter and the mechanisms we recognize as characteristics of life.

When I try to talk about that kind of thing in my biology classes, students largely shake their heads and say "huh?" We have this cultural belief that life is something special in the universe-- it's sometimes hard to think of it as just another quality of information and matter.

[okieinpain]

4. ah science the true holy grail.... n/t.

[targetpractice]

5. I wish you had been my biology teacher. ;-)

I agree with your insight.

My world changed when first read the The Selfish Gene... and then later when I read Kauffman's stuff on complexity.

[agent46]

9. Yes!

I love this idea and agree completely. To take it to the next logical step. Life is consciousness. Consciousness is an emergent property of matter. Consciousness is inevitable. (If it isn't true, it sure as hell should be!)

[Lint Head]

6. Another planet would have to contain life during the same

epoch in time as earth for there even to be a chance of us witnessing it. Those are where the astronomical odds come into play.
(Pun intended.)

[BadgerKid]

7. Reminds me of the Drake equation

for life in the galaxy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

[Odin2005]

8. Life is surely ubiquitous throughout the cosmos.

The question is how common or not complex life capable of developing sapience is. Life began on Earth 4 billion years ago. but it wasn't until a billion years ago that the first multicellular organisms, red algae, appeared. it wasn't until about 650 million years ago the first animals appeared. It wasn't until 30 million years ago that a class of animals appeared, the Anthropoid Primates, that had brains large enough from which sapience could develop, Anthropoids were pre-adapted (or exaptated as Steve Gould would of said) or sapience.