There are trillions upon trillions of stars and worlds in our Universe. Faced with such large numbers, it's tempting to conclude that there must surely be other life out there, somewhere. But is this right? Could the probability of life beginning be a number so small that we are alone? A video essay by Professor David Kipping. You can now support our research program and the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University: https://www.coolworldslab.com/support Further reading and resources: ► Chen, Jingjing & Kipping, David (2018), "On the Rate of Abiogenesis from a Bayesian Informatics Perspective", Astrobiology, 18, 12: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2018.1836 ► Hanson, Robin (1998), "Must Early Life Be Easy? The Rhythm of Major Evolutionary Transitions": http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/hardstep.pdf ► Benzene in space materials and story: http://sci.esa.int/hubble/24530-stellar-cocoon-crl-618/ ► Columbia University Department of Astronomy: http://www.astro.columbia.edu ► Cool Worlds Lab website: http://coolworlds.astro.columbia.edu Music is largely by Chris Zabriskie (http://chriszabriskie.com/) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), in order of appearance; ► The Sun is Scheduled to Come Out Tomorrow (https://soundcloud.com/chriszabriskie/the-sun-is-scheduled-to-come) ► Music from Neptune Flux, "We Were Never Meant to Live Here" (http://chriszabriskie.com/neptuneflux/) ► Cylinder Five (http://chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/) ► Music from Neptune Flux, "Stories About the World That Once Was" (http://chriszabriskie.com/neptuneflux/) ► "Waking Up" by Atlas, licensed through SoundStripe.com: https://app.soundstripe.com/songs/3984 ► Cylinder Two (http://chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/) ► Piano cover of S.T.A.Y. (Hans Zimmer) byt Jordie Eskes: https://youtu.be/dbSyDsNxAHM Video materials used: ► Intro/outro video by Miguel Aragon of Johns Hopkins University with Mark Subbarao o