But let’s forget intelligence for a second and just focus on the likelihood of Life1 in the Universe. In a paper just posted on the arXiv and submitted to the Journal of Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics, Avi Loeb (Harvard), Rafael Batista and David Sloan (Oxford), discussed the relative probability of Life emergence in the Universe as function of time. This is, in a sense, similar to asking the question “What is the likelihood of being born on Earth on a certain year?” assuming some knowledge of the number of humans alive as function of time across the full history of our planet.


  1. Life as we know it, that is life involving carbon-based chemistry in liquid water