Life by chance.

I see this come up a LOT and I've even gone over the subject previously! But I needed to put my words here to explain how I see that life is not only probable - insofar as we have direct evidence of life existing here on Earth. But is, I think, more likely than a good selection of folk would care to accept.

Understanding 'Chance'

Let's start by understanding 'chance'. Think of probability as the likelihood of a particular event happening out of all the possible events.

• Think of probability as how likely something is to happen.
• Imagine rolling a dice and trying to guess the number.

Expressing Probability

• For rolling a 6 on a dice, the chance is 1 out of 6 possible outcomes.
• We can express this as 1/6 or 1:6.
• I prefer the ratio notation, so I'd say the probability is 1:6 for a single dice roll.

In the topic of this post, there are the possible outcomes:

1. life exists
2. life does not exist

Hypothetical

Proteins and RNA

Forgive the following, but I'm going to vastly oversimplify some details about cumulative probability over time. Let us, for the sake of the following hypothetical, contemplate that the chance of life occurring on any given planet is one in four centillion. This is a phenomenally minuscule contemplation. The number representing it is gargantuan (too large to write here) - I use this as a base number as it is derived from the idea of RNA combining in just the right way such that it can cartelize for the purpose of Abiogenesis.

1:{four centillion}

Passage of Time (highly simplified)

Now, let us expand this hypothetical in that: for every year that has passed (in which there are viable places for life to exist), thirty-one million occurrences of the probability event are resolved. That means some 4.1 approximate quadrillion points of information for testing (I'm rounding to simplify).

13,000,000,000

For this hypothetical, this now reduces the probability to a still ridiculous but now more comprehensible one in one quinquagintillion (yes, that's a real number) but importantly the 'size' of the number has dropped from 602 digits to merely 164 digits. Let's continue.

1: {one quinquagintillion}

Potential locations (again, highly simplified)

This insane number must now be modified by the number of locations at which there can be a successful outcome. Our universe is so vast that even the most powerful measurements we have only account for a fraction of what is out there, and that fraction already accounts for billions, of billions of planets.

To simplify this (just to keep the thought experiment going...) let's say there are one hundred billion possible planets - and to say this is a simplification is an understatement, realistically this is closer to the number just in our local area of space, let alone the incredible space beyond it.

100,000,000,000

Well, all those events events over 100b locations (which is easy multiplication, honest!) Leaving one duoquinquagintillion. An even sillier-sounding number, but smaller - now only 153 digits. Which is, sufficed to say, still rather bloody huge odds.

1: {one duoquinquagintillion}

Impossible Odds?

This extraordinarily unlikely probability might seem to argue against my hypothesis (that the probability of life occurring by chance is 1:1) but we still have a whole raft of variables to include to further reduce the working number - I'll save you the brain space and cut to perhaps the most important determining detail I can think of and then refer to the new working probability number.

Every Possible Chemical Interaction:

Assuming that no single interaction of basic chemicals is the sole operator for the primary emergence, indeed, I will allow here that the primary interactions of chemicals that formed viable proteins and then also their further chemical interaction create such a huge gamut of possible actions somewhere in the range of 10 googol possibilities.

10 {googols}

Now we have a working number that may represent at least a 'good' guess range of our new probability-

1: {one sexdecillion}

A Review

I can, with very, very basic maths refine the probability by an incomprehensible magnitude shifting from a variable with 602 digits to just 52 digits. and I have, at every step, vastly underestimated the calculation required, If I had more time I could better determine the scope of each calculation, and likely also find additional factors to further reduce the working number.

Sadly, I am not paid for this, and as this is just a curiosity, I am happy that within a hypothetical, undercalculated contemplation the 'impossibility' becomes vastly more 'possible'.

I am suitably reassured that, given the correct parameters, and the time to properly calculate the probability would only ever shrink closer to 1:1.

But, such things are for smarter people than I to think of.

In Conclusion - Is this useful, or even interesting?

Well, to me yes, by extrapolating the numbers I found that even where there are only 13 million years of potential occurrences the probability of success is significantly higher than 0:1 likely to occur. To me, this suggests that if we were ever to come close to understanding key details we could extrapolate a probability of life.

We'd need to know how many possible 'places' life can occur, and we'd also have to determine the number of events at which life can occur, both of which are likely utterly impossible for any human to ever truly come to know.

A similar train of thought is explored here: www.science20.com - odds life could begin by chance