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A new model upends the decades-old “hard steps” theory that intelligent life was an incredibly improbable event and suggests that maybe it wasn't all that hard or improbable. The team of researchers said the new interpretation of humanity’s origin increases the probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
Credit: NASA. All Rights Reserved.
An interdisciplinary team of astrophysicists and geoscientists has questioned the evolution of a human-like intelligent species. But the question is not about whether, as creationists have been predicting for 50 plus years, but just how easy or difficult was it? That we evolved was never in any doubt.
The relevance of the easy/difficult question is that it affects our calculation of the probability of similar intelligent life evolving on other planets. If each step in its evolution was hard (the 'hard step' model), then we may be alone in the Universe; if easy, then the Universe could be teeming with life.