The habitability of a planet is largely due to chance
A study published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment calculated the probability of living on a habitable planet. The Earth has been supportive of life for 3 to 4 billion years. This is an extraordinarily long period of time, enough for single-celled life forms to evolve into human beings. How much luck is there in all of this? To answer this question, a British researcher used a supercomputer and simulated the evolution of the climate of 100,000 different planets. Each of these planets has been simulated 100 times, with random events that modify the climate: an asteroid impact, a period of volcanism, etc. The results of this simulation are very clear: 9% of these planets succeeded at least once in being habitable, but only in a few cases, and it is a question of probability and not of certainty. Overall, they remained only occasionally habitable.
The researcher recalls that the Earth is statistically exceptional and that its habitability is precarious. For example, if the asteroid that struck it 66 million years ago had been slightly larger or had fallen at some other time, our planet might have completely lost its hospitable climate. This study shows that chance is one of the major factors in the habitability of a planet.
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