What can rapid terrestrial biogenesis tell us about life in the universe
@inproceedings{Lineweaver2002WhatCR, title={What can rapid terrestrial biogenesis tell us about life in the universe}, author={C. Lineweaver and Tamara M. Davis}, year={2002} }
It is sometimes asserted that the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth suggests that life is common in the Universe. We critically examine the assumptions inherent in this argument. Using a lottery model for biogenesis in the Universe, we convert the observational constraints on the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth into constraints on the probability of biogenesis on other terrestrial planets. For example, if terrestrial biogenesis took less than 200 Myr (and we assume that it could have taken 1…
2 Citations
Characteristic length of dynamical reduction models and decay of cosmological vacuum
- Physics
- 2007
Characteristic length of mass density resolution in dynamical reduction models is calculated utilizing energy conservation law and viable cosmological model with decreasing energy density of vacuum…
References
SHOWING 1-5 OF 5 REFERENCES
Does the rapid appearance of life on Earth suggest that life is common in the universe?
- Physics, GeologyAstrobiology
- 2002
It is found that on terrestrial planets, older than approximately 1 Gyr, the probability of biogenesis is > 13% at the 95% confidence level, which quantifies an important term in the Drake Equation but does not necessarily mean that life is common in the Universe.
How Rare Are Extraterrestrial Civilizations, and When Did They Emerge?
- Physics
- 1999
It is shown that, contrary to an existing claim, the near-equality between the lifetime of the Sun and the timescale of biological evolution on Earth does not necessarily imply that extraterrestrial…
Must Early Life Be Easy? The Rhythm of Major Evolutionary Transitions
- Physics
- 1998
If we are not to conclude that most planets like Earth have evolved life as intelligent as we are, we must presume Earth is not random. This selection effect, however, also implies that the origin of…
The anthropic principle and its implications for biological evolution
- PhysicsPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences
- 1983
It is shown that the evidence suggests that the evolutionary chain included at least one but probably not more than two links that were highly improbable (a priori) in the available time interval.
The life span of the biosphere revisited
- Environmental Science, PhysicsNature
- 1992
A more elaborate model that includes a more accurate treatment of the greenhouse effect of CO2, a biologically mediated weathering parameterization, and the realization that C4 photosynthesis can persist to much lower concentrations of atmospheric CO2 is found to find that a C4-plant-based biosphere could survive for at least another 0.9 Gyr to 1.5 Gyr after the present time.