Over the Hedge by T Lewis and Michael Fry for May 31, 2016
May 30, 2016
June 01, 2016
Transcript:
Rj: Are we alone in the universe?... verne: ...rj, it's said there are 40 billion habitable planets in the milky way...multiply that by 100 billion galaxies in the universe and, hey, the odds of catching ET bbqing in his backyard start to look pretty good. rj: In socks and sandals? Verne: Let's hope humans are an outlier.
More From Over the Hedge
Make it a trillion galaxies each with a trillion suns each with a trillion worlds. Now imagine all you have to do to produce life in all its forms is arrange 300 nucleotides (enough for a tiny protein formed from 100 amino acids) into a particular sequence. Strike that: let’s make it any one of a trillion sequences. Now imagine each of the aforementioned worlds has been churning out a trillion random sequences every second for a trillion years. The odds of life EVER forming even with these ridiculous concessions is about one chance in 10 to the 113th power. To put it another way, write 113 nines, put a horizontal line beneath that, and write a one followed by a 113 zeros beneath that. That is the probability that life would not ever form naturally in such a universe.