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fork(2) [soylentnews.org] writes:

      Caleb Scharf and Leroy Cronin describe an equation to estimate the frequency of "origin-of-life" events on a planetary scale in their paper, "Quantifying the origins of life on a planetary scale" which appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [pnas.org] on July 4.

      Even better...Space.com writer Sarah Lewin explains this result on livescience.com [livescience.com] for us. The basic description is as a series of steps.

The new equation breaks down the process of abiogenesis -- the formation of life from nonliving components -- into a series of simpler factors. Those factors incorporate the planet's conditions, the ingredients needed to form life and the likelihood of those ingredients getting into the right configuration for life to emerge. As with the Drake equation [wikipedia.org], each of the terms is straightforward to describe, but each hides additional complexity and room for new research.

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