See Charley Lineweaver's recent paper (arXiv:astro-ph/0209385) for a
discussion of how likely life is to arise on a terrestrial planet. Of
course the issue of how many terrestrial planets is not covered there,
although Lineweaver has some arguments for that as well. I would not
be surprised if life is common in the universe.
However, see Robin Hanson's paper (
http://hanson.gmu.edu/hardstep.pdf)
for an argument as to why intelligent life might be rare.
Cheers
David Barrett-Lennard wrote:
..
>
> But maybe we have no reason to believe that life will happen so easily.
> Given the idea of the ensemble for a TOE, it is only necessary that
> SAS's can exist - no matter how improbable.
..
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile)
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 (")
Australia R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Room 2075, Red Centre
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Wed Nov 12 2003 - 21:09:06 PST