Life in the Universe

Abstract

Is life most likely to emerge at the present cosmic time around a star like the Sun? Loeb will review the habitability throughout cosmic history from the birth of the first stars 30 million years after the Big Bang to the death of the last stars in ten trillion years. Unless habitability around low mass stars is suppressed, life is most likely to emerge near stars with a tenth of a solar mass ten trillion years from now. Forthcoming searches for bio-signatures in the atmospheres of transiting Earth-mass planets around nearby low-mass stars will determine whether present-day life is indeed premature from a cosmic perspective.