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Re:Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star by Buttons840 on Wednesday August 24, 2016 @06:20PM (#12355695)
The size of the universe is a large number, but the chance of life just forming from chaos is 1/(a large number). So the odds of life elsewhere in the universe is, roughly, a large number divided by another large number. The question is which large number is larger?

We don't know how difficult it is to create life. The universe is big, but the difficulty of creating life might be much bigger.

Thus. It is not certain that there is life elsewhere.

Re:Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star by MAGZine on Wednesday August 24, 2016 @10:17PM (#12356590)
Just today we found the closest star to us to have a planet in the habitable zone.

The closest star. But, we struggle to observe it in any capacity. Indeed, only today we did. And that's nothing to say of the next closest star, or the next, or the next, ad (nearly) infinitum.

If planets in this zone aren't as rare as we think, life in the universe might also not be as rare as we think.

To me, the question is more "where," rather than "if."

Re:Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star by Tepix on Thursday August 25, 2016 @05:56AM (#12357891)
The fact that life appeared on earth very shortly after it formed gives us a good indicator that Abiogenesis may not be that rare.

Something that's probably a lot more rare is favorable conditions over a long time period. It took a long time for life on planet earth to evolve into more complex forms.

I'm pretty sure we're not the only ones out there. But will mankind and our space neighbours exist long enough to facilitate communication?

Is every species that is competitive enough to subdue all other life on its planet doomed to disintegrate due to internal conflict?