Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday reminds us of his celebrated claim that, given the thousands of Earth-like planets outside the solar system, on purely statistical grounds life almost certainly exists somewhere else. The celebrated SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) programme assumes that living things will inevitably evolve to get smarter and smarter and may be sending out signals to be picked up by their distant fellows. So far, alas, it has heard nothing but noise.
At 1.15 today in a public lecture at University College London, the biochemist Nick Lane will pour a dash of metaphorical cold water on that notion. He argues that advanced life (and that stretches from amoeba to us) is unique: that the chance of its origin is so remote that it happened only once, and almost certainly has no equivalent anywhere else.
What an utterly depressing notion, but thankfully, that's all it is. To read more, click here.