It’s not really news after a decade, but I still think it’s worth a look. This is something I think about sometimes, and it’s better to let the actual scholars speak.
For whatever reason it’s not mentioned as a candidate great filter very often even though nearly all the later steps on the path to complexity have happened more than once, and there’s lots of habitable looking exoplanets.
Edit: To be clear, this says that just because life started early on Earth, doesn’t really provide much evidence it’s an easy process, if you allow that it could possibly be very unlikely indeed.
Ah OK, so this paper argues that given the right conditions the appearance of life is not necessarily likely. Basically it’s hard to know for sure with a single example (Earth). If it is in fact unlikely, it could explain why we haven’t met extraterrestrial life already. Thanks!
Yes! Although it’s less “right conditions” and more “spontaneous appearance, given perfect conditions”.