An objective Bayesian analysis of life's early start and our late arrival.

ABSTRACT: Life emerged on Earth within the first quintile of its habitable window, but a technological civilization did not blossom until its last. Efforts to infer the rate of abiogenesis, based on its early emergence, are frustrated by the selection effect that if the evolution of intelligence is a slow process, then life's early start may simply be a prerequisite to our existence, rather than useful evidence for optimism. In this work, we interpret the chronology of these two events in a Bayesian framework, extending upon previous work by considering that the evolutionary timescale is itself an unknown that needs to be jointly inferred, rather than fiducially set. We further adopt an objective Bayesian approach, such that our results would be agreed upon even by those using wildly different prior

SUBMITTER: Kipping D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7275750 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature