As far as I’m aware, only one abiogenesis event has happened on earth- a place with copious amounts of the exact right molecules in cosmically unique quantity, density, and environment to form self-replicating RNA. If abiogenesis has happened anywhere else, it hasn’t evolved into intelligent life whose work has intercepted our light cone. My current model for how abiogenesis went down in our world begins with the semi-random coalescence of more than a thousand nucleotides- for reference, the smallest known self-replicating bacterium has a roughly 580,000 base-pair genome. Assuming each additional required nucleotide introduces a 1⁄2 chance of failure, each random coalescence event has a less than (1/2)^1000 ~= 10^-300 chance of forming a viable self-replicator. This estimate is completely off the scale with respect to events that you can expect to occur in a 100 billion l.y. radius sphere.
This is my current idea, at least. Do you know of a more persuasive argument?
EDIT: For future readers, I now consider the Grabby Aliens paper to present a compelling alternate model.
[Question] How common are abiogenesis events?
As far as I’m aware, only one abiogenesis event has happened on earth- a place with copious amounts of the exact right molecules in cosmically unique quantity, density, and environment to form self-replicating RNA. If abiogenesis has happened anywhere else, it hasn’t evolved into intelligent life whose work has intercepted our light cone. My current model for how abiogenesis went down in our world begins with the semi-random coalescence of more than a thousand nucleotides- for reference, the smallest known self-replicating bacterium has a roughly 580,000 base-pair genome. Assuming each additional required nucleotide introduces a 1⁄2 chance of failure, each random coalescence event has a less than (1/2)^1000 ~= 10^-300 chance of forming a viable self-replicator. This estimate is completely off the scale with respect to events that you can expect to occur in a 100 billion l.y. radius sphere.
This is my current idea, at least. Do you know of a more persuasive argument?
EDIT: For future readers, I now consider the Grabby Aliens paper to present a compelling alternate model.