Quote:
Originally Posted by Markvan
The variables that have created life on Earth ( through accident or design) would have to be found elsewhere in the universe.
I hope I live long enough to see the universe understood in more detail.
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That is what the biologists have a problem with, if they are right about the chance of the materials forming being so incredibly rare ( e.g. 10^50000 or even 10^30000) then the universe isn't big enough for it to be likely that the same variables would exist anywhere else that created life on Earth.
Their argument is that you could have 10 billion "earthlike" planets, and the chances would still be infinitesimally small that life would appear.
The conditions during a lotto draw are basically the same each time, the balls start off in the same order, and are dropped from the same height into a barrel that rotates in the same way each time. Yet the sequence of numbers that come out are basically always different.
Imagine a lotto draw with a few billion balls in it, and the chances of a particular number sequence appearing, even though the starting conditions are basically the same each time.
You could do a draw a day for the entire age of the universe and never see your sequence once.
Yet this is billions of times more likely to happen than the proteins required for life appearing even on a single 'earthlike' planet.
If they are wrong, and the formation of life *is* likely, then what is the mechanism that drives molecules to form non-randomly into long complex chains that are non-periodic and specific enough to lead to life?
If they are right, then we are a collosal fluke, and unless panspermia works then we are most likely alone in the universe.
That is the big question for me. Is there an as-yet undiscovered law, perhaps something will come from information theory or whatever it is called these days, that means life is likely in our universe, or are we truly alone?