Every so often, someone kicks around the idea that life could have got started maybe 15 million years after the Big Bang. It’s back. Same guy, new traction:
In this scenario for the early universe, rocky planets born from the dregs of massive, primordial stars would have been warmed by the heat of a radiation that permeated all of space, which was much hotter back then than it is now. One of these ancient worlds could have supported liquid water on its surface irrespective of its distance to a star, and thus been habitable to primitive forms of Earth-like organisms, said Avi Loeb, who chairs the Harvard astronomy department.
With the discovery of exoplanets, Loeb said, scientists are beginning to seriously consider that life-as-we-know-it exists in other places.
“What I’m saying here is that it can also be extended to other, earlier, times,” he said.
Loeb’s research is detailed in a new paper published in this month’s issue of the International Journal of Astrobiology, and he presented it recently at a public lecture at Harvard.
Basic improbability slightly reduced, but probably not enough to matter.
See also:
Maybe if we throw enough models at the origin of life… some of them will stick?
The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (origin of life)
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