"Steven D. Litvintchouk" wrote:

We do know this:  On Earth, life seems to have first formed about 600
million years after the formation of the Earth.  The Earth itself is
4.6
billion years old.  So that means that life formed on Earth in its
"childhood".

And I've never heard any plausible argument that conditions on the
primordial Earth were in any way rare or unique for primordial planets
the size of ours elsewhere in the Galaxy.

If true, then that suggests that the formation of life on an
Earth-like
primordial planet isn't that difficult.

The fact is, we don't know.  One biased data point equals no data
points.  We don't know whether the time between Earth's formation and
the origin of life was typical or atypical.  Even if when conditions are
right, it takes a very short amount of time for life to develop, that
might still be consistent with a very lonely Galaxy if, for instance,
the conditions that are required are themselves very rare, or very
restricted.  There's no way we can know what's really going on here
until we get more data.

-- 
   Erik Max Francis && max@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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