How common is life in the Universe?
The answer to this is closely tied to how life on Earth got started. One idea that’ s attracting a lot of attention right now is that there may be a “Life Principle” at work in the Universe. In other words, wherever there exist the necessary prebiotic ingredients – simple carbon compounds, an energy source, and maybe water – evolution leading to primitive living things will proceed inevitably and automatically as a matter of course. This idea is an offshoot of complexity theory and has been pushed hard by researchers such as Manfred Eigen, Stuart Kauffman and Robert Shapiro (see Shapiro’s Planetary Dreams, for example). I happen to think this makes a lot of sense. If there is a Life Principle, then we’ d expect life – at least life at a microbial level – to be rampant across the cosmos. We’ d certainly expect signs of it somewhere else in the Solar System (such as on Mars and Europa). And we would expect to find the early stages of the Life Principle in action on the surface of Titan,
Related Questions
- It seems clear that Bujolds universe assumes that although complex life is pretty common in the universe--native ecologies on Barrayar and Sergyar, for example--intelligent life is quite rare. Why?
- Does the rapid appearance of life on Earth suggest that life is common in the universe?
- How common is life in the Universe?
