The Uniqueness Of Earth (or Not)….

According to Ned Potter from abc news Dr Andrew Watson from the University of East Anglia says

the odds of finding beings like us elsewhere is very, very low — perhaps as little as 0.01 percent over the four billion years that a given planet like ours is likely to be friendly to life. (Hat tip to Tuan Nguyen of our staff for catching this.) Watson is hardly alone in his belief; Don Brownlee and Peter Ward wrote a book called “Rare Earth” in 2000, in which they argued that our planet was extremely unusual–not only did it have liquid water, not only was it the right size to hold an atmosphere, but it also had a giant neighbor (Jupiter) to draw away asteroids and other debris that might otherwise have pummeled it as the Solar System formed. Find a good discussion with them, Drake and others, HERE. The factor Watson introduces to the argument is that, as he argues, there’s a finite window for life on Earth–and we came into being relatively late in that window. The Sun is slowly growing in intensity (no, lest we digress in that direction, not enough to explain the warming of recent decades), so that Earth has “only” (his quotes, not mine) about a billion years before it gets fried.

But Mr Potter also reminds us about the Drake equation, invented by Frank Drake of the SETI institute thats ultimate function was to calculate the possibility of life on other planets, and intelligent life at that. activemindremarks

The real value of the Drake Equation is not in the answer itself, but the questions that are prompted when attempting to come up with an answer. Obviously there is a tremendous amount of guess work involved when filling in the variables. As we learn more from astronomy, biology, and other sciences, we’ll be able to better estimate the answers

I think this is true for Dr Watson and his freinds as well - there is so much guess work involved with our current fraction of knowledge of the universe that statements as blunt as the above - leaving just about no place for any other possibility are not as wise as they would seem.