I once did a back of the envelope calculation and came up with a chance for our existence albeit a small one but virtually no chance for life to exist anywhere else.
Forget the fact we don’t even know how big the universe is… The smartest minds have yet to even figure out what over 95% of the knowable universe is (what they call dark matter/dark energy). That’s the extent of our current ignorance. So whether you want to extrapolate rough probabilities on a sheet of paper or on a supercomputer, the numbers you're inputting are so astronomically flawed that it renders the whole process, and results, pointless.
Our planet is the result of a lot of luck.
No, our planet is the result of a lot of randomness and chaos, something that exists virtually everywhere. Our existence isn’t luck, it just is. What we call “life” is an inevitable yet wholly insignificant byproduct from the creation of our universe and the resulting laws of physics and chemistry that govern the cosmos.
I will include that I believe there was divine intervention but you don't have to include that in your calculations.
How can you think our existence is simultaneously the result of a lot of luck AND divine intervention? That is a hilarious contradiction. At any rate, I’ll pretend you didn’t mention divine intervention and will proceed as though you’re capable of rational thought.
All solar systems out there that I've heard of contain rocky planets ten times the size of the earth and orbiting closer to their star then mercury orbits the sun.
I see, and how many solar systems have you heard of?
Because astronomers are quick to point out that they’re finding these larger gas giants and the “super-earths” you’re referring to because they are much easier to detect given their size and/or proximity to the star. It’s not a coincidence that 85% of the planets discovered are so close to the sun they’re tidally locked given the methods scientists are using.
As an example of how hard it is to detect planets further from the sun, there is now significant proof that there’s a planet nine in our very own solar system, waaay out beyond the orbit of Neptune in a highly elliptical orbit. Because of the distance/darkness they’ve yet to find it, they only see its effects. And that’s in our own solar system.
Going off memory I think they’ve discovered about 4,000 exo-planets. A very conservative estimate is that there are 100 billion planets in the galaxy alone. A very conservative estimate is that there are 100 billion galaxies in the known universe.
Taking the 4,000 planets (which are almost all very large and close to their stars as I’ve mentioned) that have been discovered and trying to extrapolate the probability of life in the universe from that is like scooping one of the 352 quintillion gallons of ocean water off the surface, not seeing any fish in it, and declaring that the probability of there being fish anywhere on earth is virtually zero. It’s so nonsensical it’s funny.
Think of all that must have gone right.
Again, that phrase presupposes that we were the goal of the universe to begin with. It also presupposes that the exact chain of events of our solar system are the only way to arrive at “life”.
Because of all the elements involved, we are the result of at least a third generation star explosion
I fail to see how this is in anyway rare? Nebulae extend light years and give birth to countless stars and mix with other interstellar gas clouds and innumerable rocky and icy bodies. Our sun is one of hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way alone that are third generation. Our sun isn’t even an extreme population 1 star which are the most metal rich. The sun is an intermediate Population 1 star. There may be even sixth generation stars in the Milky Way. Even conservatively, there are several billions of stars just like our own in the Milky Way alone.
We have to be in the Goldilocks zone not to close and not to far away from our sun;
The estimates I’ve seen say about 1 in 5 stars like our sun have at least one earth-sized planet in the habitable zone. There are 200 billion stars in our galaxy.
That said, many believe that even within our own solar system, the best candidates for life aren’t the planets, but the moons around planets, which are often far outside the goldilocks zone. Europa and Enceladus are the best candidates.
The three basic ingredients for life (
as we know it) are liquid water, organic compounds and energy. Enceladus for example seems to have all three. An internal ocean, much deeper than our own, an energy source, not from the sun but likely from tidal heating, and ejected plumes that Cassini went through show that there are actually carbon-bearing molecules and complex organic compounds as well.
An even bigger trip is Pluto. It should just be a cold dead rock yet it’s got active geology, ice volcanoes, fast-moving glaciers, mountain ranges as big as the Rockies, etc. The active geology is driven by heat, however its too small to have retained any heat, it’s much too far from the sun, and it wouldn’t have tidal heating, so how? There’s good evidence that pluto has a deep subterranean ocean, and over time as the planet cools, the water must be freezing and as it freezes it releases a form of energy called latent heat. And that release of energy could be what is powering active geology.
When New Horizons passed by Pluto, the probe turned to take a photo of Pluto backlit against the sun. Scientists hoped to capture the unmistakable haze of organic chemistry. And they saw that atmosphere, a blue ring of nitrogen gas, just like we see on earth. That ring is basically manufacturing complex organic materials from the simpler building blocks in the atmosphere of Pluto, like carbon monoxide, methane, and nitrogen, which are then being broken apart in the faint sunlight and reassembled in these hazes into organic molecules.
There are actually areas on Pluto that are reddish-brown which is actually organics. If that organic chemistry is getting cycled down by the active geology, over time they could be transported to the area where ice melts and meets liquid water. And the chemical evolution of those organics molecules could continue there driven by Pluto’s heat.
That doesn’t mean life is on Pluto, but think about that. The three essential ingredients for life are found in so many places under such different circumstances in just our solar system (You'll notice I haven't even brought up Mars yet). This is notable because of panspermia. With all three ingredients being this common, think of the countless meteoroids, asteroids, comets, dust particles and even entire planets and moons that have been set free from the gravity of their original star and now drift randomly to every corner of the galaxy ready to seed whatever body they eventually run into over the course of billions of years.
