地球上生命的迅速出现是否意味着生命在宇宙中很普遍？
Does the rapid appearance of life on Earth suggest that life is common in the universe?
作者信息
Lineweaver Charles H, Davis Tamara M
机构信息
School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Australian Centre for Astrobiology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
出版信息
Astrobiology. 2002 Fall;2(3):293-304. doi: 10.1089/153110702762027871.
It is sometimes assumed that the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth suggests that life is common in the Universe. Here we critically examine the assumptions inherent in this if-life-evolved-rapidly-life-must-be-common argument. We use the observational constraints on the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth to infer the probability of biogenesis on terrestrial planets with the same unknown probability of biogenesis as the Earth. We find that on such planets, older than approximately 1 Gyr, the probability of biogenesis is > 13% at the 95% confidence level. This quantifies an important term in the Drake Equation but does not necessarily mean that life is common in the Universe.
有时人们认为地球上生物起源的迅速性表明生命在宇宙中很普遍。在此，我们批判性地审视了“如果生命进化迅速，那么生命必然普遍存在”这一观点中所固有的假设。我们利用对地球上生物起源迅速性的观测限制，来推断与地球具有相同未知生物起源概率的类地行星上生物起源的概率。我们发现，在年龄大于约10亿年的此类行星上，在95%的置信水平下，生物起源的概率大于13%。这量化了德雷克方程中的一个重要项，但并不一定意味着生命在宇宙中很普遍。
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