Does the rapid appearance of life on Earth suggest that life is common in the Universe?

Abstract

It is sometimes assumed that the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth suggests that life is common in the Universe. Here we critically examine the assumptions inherent in this if-life-evolved-rapidly-life-must-be-common argument. We use the observational constraints on the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth to infer the probability of biogenesis on terrestrial planets with the same unknown probability of biogenesis as the Earth. We find that on such planets, older than ~ 1 Gyr, the probability of biogenesis is > 13% at the 95% confidence level. This quantifies an important term in the Drake Equation but does not necessarily mean that life is common in the Universe.

21 pages, 5 figures, conforms to published version, Figure 5 corrected lowering probability cited in previous version, references updated

References in corpus (1)

• The Observational Case for Jupiter Being a Typical Massive Planet

Cited by in corpus (32)

• Bayesian analysis of the astrobiological implications of life's early emergence on Earth
• Galactic Gradients, Postbiological Evolution and the Apparent Failure of SETI
• M-theory, Cosmological Constant and Anthropic Principle
• Enhanced interplanetary panspermia in the TRAPPIST-1 system
• Physical constraints on the likelihood of life on exoplanets
• Fermi's Paradox - The Last Challenge for Copernicanism?
• Effect of Metallicity on the Evolution of the Habitable Zone from the Pre-Main Sequence to the Asymptotic Giant Branch and the Search for Life
• Quantifying the Origins of Life on a Planetary Scale
• Five or six step scenario for evolution?
• Subsurface Exolife
• The Cosmic Coincidence as a Temporal Selection Effect Produced by the Age Distribution of Terrestrial Planets in the Universe
• Dependence of Biological Activity on the Surface Water Fraction of Planets
• Is Life Most Likely Around Sun-like Stars?
• Emergence of life in an inflationary universe
• Galactic Punctuated Equilibrium: How to Undermine Carter's Anthropic Argument in Astrobiology
• Does life's rapid appearance imply a Martian origin?
• Role of stellar physics in regulating the critical steps for life
• On the Rate of Abiogenesis from a Bayesian Informatics Perspective
• Astrobiological Complexity with Probabilistic Cellular Automata
• Life's Chirality From Prebiotic Environments
• A novel SETI strategy targeting the solar focal regions of the most nearby stars
• The Impact of Stellar Abundance Variations on Stellar Habitable Zone Evolution
• Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist
• On the Non-observability of Recent Biogenesis
• SETI and Democracy
• The longevity of habitable planets and the development of intelligent life
• The Log Log Prior for the Frequency of Extraterrestrial Intelligences
• Space ethics to test directed panspermia
• Solid grains ejected from terrestrial exoplanets as a probe of the abundance of life in the Milky Way
• Bioverse: Potentially Observable Exoplanet Biosignature Patterns Under the UV Threshold Hypothesis for the Origin of Life
• Characteristic length of dynamical reduction models and decay of cosmological vacuum
• Applications of Bayesian Probability Theory in Astrophysics