Relative Likelihood for Life as a Function of Cosmic Time

Loeb, Abraham; Batista, Rafael A.; Sloan, David

doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2016/08/040

Relative Likelihood for Life as a Function of Cosmic Time

Jun 27, 2016

10 pages

Published in:

JCAP 08 (2016) 040

Published: Aug 18, 2016

e-Print:

1606.08448 [astro-ph.CO]

DOI:

10.1088/1475-7516/2016/08/040

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Abstract: (IOP)

Is life most likely to emerge at the present cosmic time near a star like the Sun? We address this question by calculating the relative formation probability per unit time of habitable Earth-like planets within a fixed comoving volume of the Universe, dP(t)/dt, starting from the first stars and continuing to the distant cosmic future. We conservatively restrict our attention to the context of ``life as we know it'' and the standard cosmological model, ΛCDM . We find that unless habitability around low mass stars is suppressed, life is most likely to exist near ~ 0.1M(⊙) stars ten trillion years from now. Spectroscopic searches for biosignatures in the atmospheres of transiting Earth-mass planets around low mass stars will determine whether present-day life is indeed premature or typical from a cosmic perspective.

Note:

10 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP)

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Figures(6)

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