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Why would life be ridiculously common? It cannot appear by itself, that would be "spontaneous generation" [1], a long rejected theory. The Earth is extremely su
by Grue3 10y ago
Why would life be ridiculously common? It cannot appear by itself, that would be "spontaneous generation" [1], a long rejected theory. The Earth is extremely suitable for life. It could've easily supported independently evolved life-forms. Yet every living thing we know has a common ancestor, including extinct organisms. Just based on that fact, the odds are firmly stacked against other life anywhere near us. The fact that we can observe life on Earth is just a consequence of Anthropic principle [2] and says nothing about the probability of life emerging on other planets.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
- rnet85 10y agoSpontaneous generation was never a valid scientific theory. For a more accurate one look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis Also, the probablity of generation of organic compounds which are precursors to life is pretty high given right environment, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment