See Charley Lineweaver's recent paper (arXiv:astro-ph/0209385) for a discussion of how likely life is to arise on a terrestrial planet. Of course the issue of how many terrestrial planets is not covered there, although Lineweaver has some arguments for that as well. I would not be surprised if life is common in the universe.
However, see Robin Hanson's paper (http://hanson.gmu.edu/hardstep.pdf) for an argument as to why intelligent life might be rare. Cheers David Barrett-Lennard wrote: .. > > But maybe we have no reason to believe that life will happen so easily. > Given the idea of the ensemble for a TOE, it is only necessary that > SAS's can exist - no matter how improbable. .. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Director High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile) UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 (") Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] Room 2075, Red Centre http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
