Is life an extremely rare thing in the universe?

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Considering the life has only originated once in the history of the Earth, wouldn't that suggest that life is a pretty rare event? If it were common, shoudn't we expect it to have originated independently multiple times on Earth?

It, ah, kinda did. Unless you mean the presence of life at all, but there's no real way to tell if that wouldn't happen again - we've never had a total extinction of all life on the planet, just of certain kinds.

Once? I'd say it exists 3.5 billion times, if you count one life per year. I imagine it occurred independently for bacteria.. Like a field of grass, at first, it's just here and there that you see flowers blooming, before you know it, green has turned into violet and yellow. It didn't start with one bacteria coming into being then it spread from that one spot on earth. I sometimes wonder if this universe bloomed in the same way, though scientific evidence disagrees. I dont think life is too rare, it's certainly not common. I know sentient life is much rarer, but still quite feasable. Whatever exists beyond mere consciousness must be excessively rare though.

It doesn't work like that. The emergence of life drastically changed the conditions on Earth, and may well have made it impossible for life to arise again. For one thing, the emergence of plants totally changed the makeup of the atmosphere.

Thread question: Only speculation can be offered at this juncture as there is no evidence available at this time.

Personally, I believe that life is likely to be ubiquitous as the same pre-conditions for the formation of organic molecules appear to exist throughout the Universe. Astronomy has found many extra-solar planets and as technology advances we should be able to detect evidence for life.

It may well have done but the less successful lifeforms got eaten by the more successful lifeforms so we will never know.

You might want to look up left handed dna if you are interested in this topic.

I assume that term is some manner of slang or jargon? Might I get an explanation of it? You've got me interested, at the very least ^_^

There are gazillions of planets. Earth is the only planet (so far) that we know of on which intelligent life has emerged. We have no way of knowing (at this time) where intelligent life exists either in our own galaxy or in the cosmos as a whole.

I cannot bring myself to believe that earth is the only planet with life or the only planet with intelligent life. But that is just a hunch. Solid evidence positive or negative is hard to come by.

ruveyn

At the same time we may just be a petridish for some far advanced lifeform. To assume we are intelligent when there is nothing to compare to is a bit arrogant and presumptious.

I'd disagree; to assume that we are the most intelligent would be arrogant. We do have beings with lesser capacities for abstract thought to compare ourselves to, and we're intelligent by those comparisons.

The thing is, with the size of the Universe, if we found life within our own solar system, that would be the equivalent of finding life in our backyard. If we did, that would indicate that life isn't rare at all. It's actually impossible to make any definite statement on how rare life is in the universe, mainly due to the size of the Universe and our limited technology.

Intelligent life is another story, but we've already found "suspicious" suns that may have Dyson Sphere constructs around them. Given the age of the Universe, life could have come and gone many times over in the many billions of years since the big bang. I mean, for all we know there could be underground ruins on a myriad of planets within our solar system.

Furthermore, as our knowledge of life on our own planet increases, we're finding more and more "extremophiles" IE organisms that live in extreme conditions, so perhaps the "Goldy-locks" premise is wrong.

There is of course the matter of the "Fermi-paradox" IE "Where is everyone" but that assumes that A: Earth is interesting, B: That life on other planets have mastered space travel to a point where they are actually able to traverse space in a reasonable amount of time given the lifespan of that species.

From a pure mathematical perspective, the odds of there being life on other planets is quite high, given the amount of solar systems within a galaxy, multiplied by the number of galaxies within the universe.

That's a spurious argument. One most likely can always find a lifeform lower than oneself and claim superiority. By that standard a minor league team is great when compared to junior high school teams.

...And that statement is absolutely true. What other metric for 'intelligent' are you proposing? Capacity for abstract thought seems like a good one to me.

Not sure I follow you are you suggesting all life originated on earth? If so I'd probably disagree and find that assumption a bit on the arrogant side. I mean with all the millions of planets in the universe I doubt ours is any more special, its not as though our planet and only our planet was selected to be the basis of all life.

We must always keep a sense of the unknown, the impossible as a metric. How many Romans, during the empire, ever thought man would flying by the thousands everyday?