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Re:Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a ... by rich_sasha on Monday January 09, 2023 @07:58AM (#34309813)
One thing that gives me pause for thought: even here on Earth, we are all, likely, descendants of a single organism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_common_ancestor .

It doesn't necessarily mean that the 0-1 creation of life happened exactly once on Earth (maybe it happened many times but the other lineages died out), but I think it makes this argument likely. We see a near-infinite menagerie of different organisms, from archaea and bacteria to reptiles and mammals, each finding its own niche, yet we don't see, on our own planet, any other blueprint for 0-1 life creation. Everything is DNA/RNA and cells, based on carbon and water, etc. And here we know conditions are just right, and we have studied the Earth like no other alien world.

I'd expect, if the universe is in fact teaming with life, that we would see "aliens" on our own planet. But all we see is descendants of LUCA. It seems to me that either "life" is in fact vanishingly rare, or there's lots of other life forms we don't notice (including on Earth). My gut feeling is on the former.

Re:Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a ... by b800h on Monday January 09, 2023 @08:10AM (#34309920)
I think once you have one particular "life framework", it likely makes it super-difficult for other frameworks to develop in any major way.
Re:Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a ... by rich_sasha on Monday January 09, 2023 @08:30AM (#34310062)
Maybe, but why? We have everything from archaea to mammals living and thriving alongside. Why not DNA life alongside non-DNA life?

Is DNA-based life some kind of cosmic inevitability, like gravity? Or substitute for "DNA" any other common property of all life in Earth.

Re:Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a ... by lamontcg on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:28PM (#34313995)
It may be the 'LUCA' is very nearly the ideal early life form and RNA/DNA are the right way to do things. Just like water is pretty unique.

Or alternatively, the first successful organisms on a planet out compete and literally eat the other organisms to extinction.