re: LIfe on other planets?

I don't think it would be possible to quantify it.

It would be so many guesses and estimations piled on top of each other that I think the only thing that would result is a number we cannot possibly comprehend.

For example, number of comets in the universe with water, amino acids, etc. Odds that those comets would eventually hit the same planet(we don't even know for sure if that is how our planet got started).

Planets that could have a moon as massive as ours to draw comets away from the earth. Massive planets in the outskirts that would help as well. All this development happening in the same time the planet is in the habitable zone, etc. and i am a math and physics person, not biology so I am sure there are thousands of other factors.

1/(1236893028509289430593034027349309450947509709527*10^10000).

but so many of my estimations could be wrong so who knows how accurate it actually is.

what do you mean said zero?

That is what the number approaches, 1/very large or ever increasing number always approximate to zero.

If you've studied chemistry, especially biochemistry or organic, your opinion about extraterrestrial life is probably close to mine. IMO, life is ubiquitous. Simple life, that is. Some simple chemical mixes display rudimentary characteristics of life. The line between life and not-life.

It's complex lifeforms that may be on the rare side. Simple life began on earth after only a few hundred million years. It persisted as Cyanobacteria for some 3.8 billion years until about 600 million years ago. The so-called "Cambrian explosion" saw the rapid and mysterious evolution of multicellular organisms that ultimately led to us. No one has even a good theory about what caused this sudden shift in evolution.

So, yes, there's plenty of life beyond earth. Complex sentient life? Maybe not so much.

Impossible to quantify for sure.

How can you put a number on chance of life with so many other variables?

And while there are so many planets out there and it's easy to say "there has to be life, the universe is huge."

Huge, big, large, a lot, etc. are all relative. They are big to us, but that means nothing in the bigger picture.

That said I couldn't care less about life on other planets.

nearest planet that might be habitable is what, 20 light years away? that's 117,572,510,824,968 miles.

and 20 light years is nothing. Observable universe is 93,000,000,000 light years.

there has to be some extraterrestrial life out there. but it's too fricking far away so we'll probably never find out.

quote:

---

My main point is what were the odds that whatever triggered the "cambrian explosion" as you stated was going to occur. How many different chance impacts had led up to it and provided the necessary ingredients for it to happen?

---

The Drake Equation is about all I can offer you for the "odds" of events such as the Cambrian Explosion happening. We don't yet know how it happened or what might have precipitated it.

We do know that cometary and asteroidal impacts played a critical role for the evolution of life on earth. It seems logical to think this would be a common event for the development of life on other worlds, too.

quote:

---

An infinite number of galaxies each with billions of planets

---

This has always blown my mind. The though of infinity is so unreal...it's like how does such things exist and go on forever. You would think there has to be a limit, or a point where matter is no more and it's just blank space.

Perhaps there is a line where violent reactions take place causing the Universe to expand into that blank space. Who really knows