How often does life start on other worlds?

Astrobiology an exciting new field studying how life begins and the conditions needed both on Earth and elsewhere in the cosmos. Columbia's Director of Astrobiology, Dr Caleb Scharf, dropped into the Cool Worlds Lab to tell us about his new paper which created a "Drake Equation" for abiogenesis. Whilst we can only guess at many of the factors in the equation right now, it provides a framework for tackling this problem going forward.

::More about this Video::

► The paper by Scharf & Cronin (2016), "Quantifying the Origins of Life on a Planetary Scale": https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.02549
► Drake Equation explained on the SETI website: http://www.seti.org/drakeequation
► Outro music by Taylor Davis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl9kI1yQKZk

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