Probability of Life Arising Calculations

Uhh....Mike? The Late Heavy Bombardment was about 3.85 billion years ago, and the first really promising signs of life about 3.5 billion. Do you really think 350,000,000 years isn't A Long Time? Dinosaurs were far, far in the future that many years ago. And more evidence rolls in all the time as to ways you can go from soup to life - just this last week I read a paper about how carbonyl sulfide, a common gas from volcanos, causes amino acids to link up to form peptides - in water solution, yet. Stick some of that stuff to clay near a subsea vent, and pretty soon you'll have proteins. Oh? The same scientists that are discovering extrasolar planets in droves and finding new mechanisms like the one I just mentioned, or different scientists?

And there is a very strong selection bias at work in the 100+ planets outside our solar system that we have discovered to date. The instruments available now to look for them, and the methods used to look, have been far better able to detect Jupiter-or-bigger, close-to-their-sun planets. And all hundred of them have been found in about a decade now. Give technology another twenty years, Mike - they'll be Earth-size "habitable-zone" planets aplenty.Finding life a hundred light-years away, though - that may be a tougher nut to crack.