We are not short of theories about the origin of life:
- “How did life on Earth begin? Here are 3 popular theories” (National Geographic, 2024)
- “7 of the most popular theories for the origin of life” (Interesting Engineering, 2023)
- “7 theories on the origin of life” (Live Science, 2022)
- “The 10 Main Theories Of The Origin Of Life” (Psychology for Mental Health, 2025)
- “15 Theories About the Origin of Life — From the Strange to the Plausible” (Science Sensei, 2025)
- “Top 20 Scientific Theories on the Origins of Human Life” (Medium, 2024) (For some reason, the title promises theories of the origin of human life but the list comprises theories about the origin of life in general.)
The multiplicity of theories vindicates an entry written for Britannica by Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) and Carl Sagan (1934–1996) which begins, “Perhaps the most fundamental and at the same time the least understood biological problem is the origin of life.” That caveat deters no one from guessing.
Quantifying the Unlikelihood of Life Just Happening
The friend who recommended “The unreasonable likelihood of being: origin of life, terraforming, and AI” is generally a source of good tips. So I dug in. The author, Professor Robert Endres of Imperial College London, has no axe to grind, so far as I can see. But he senses that something is wrong. Here’s the Abstract:
The origin of life on Earth via the spontaneous emergence of a protocell prior to Darwinian evolution remains a fundamental open question in physics and chemistry. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on information theory and algorithmic complexity. Using estimates grounded in modern computational models, we evaluate the difficulty of assembling structured biological information under plausible prebiotic conditions. Our results highlight the formidable entropic and informational barriers to forming a viable protocell within the available window of Earth’s early history. While the idea of Earth being terraformed by advanced extraterrestrials might violate Occam’s razor from within mainstream science, directed panspermia — originally proposed by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel — remains a speculative but logically open alternative. Ultimately, uncovering physical principles for life’s spontaneous emergence remains a grand challenge for biological physics.
“The unreasonable likelihood of being: origin of life, terraforming, and AI”” by Robert G. Endres, 24 July 2025, arXiv. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2507.18545 July 25, 2025
This sounds like an oblique way of saying that the chances of life getting started spontaneously are so small that it is at least reasonable to think that an extraterrestrial intelligence started it.
At Universe Today, Mark Thompson explains,
Using cutting edge mathematical approaches, researcher Robert G. Endres from Imperial College London has developed a framework that suggests the spontaneous origin of life faces far greater challenges than previously understood.
The study focuses on the difficulty of assembling structured biological information under what could be reasonably expected prebiotic conditions, showing just how hard it would be for the first living cell to form naturally on early Earth. Think of it like trying to write an article about the origins of life for a well renowned space based website by randomly throwing letters at a page. The chances of success become astronomically small as the required complexity increases.
“What Were the Chances of Abiogenesis?,” July 31, 2025
It’s not clear that we could even spell out S-T-O-P by randomly throwing letters at a page. For one thing, if Thompson’s analogy is correct, wrong letters are not merely useless; they obscure the message.
Cue Advanced Aliens
Thompson adds,
While maintaining scientific rigor, the paper acknowledges that directed panspermia, originally proposed by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, remains a speculative but logically open alternative. This hypothesis suggests that life might have been intentionally seeded on Earth by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, though the author notes this idea challenges Occam’s razor, the scientific principle favoring simpler explanations.
“Abiogenesis?,”
“Advanced extraterrestrial civilizations” is just a roundabout way of saying that some input of intelligence (specified complexity) is needed to get life going. We’re allowed to consider that intelligent design may have got life going provided we locate it somewhere between Star Wars and Star Trek.
As for Occam’s razor, how is the current approach — twenty inadequate explanations later — simpler?
Two Key Questions
Endres’s article is informative and it prompts these questions:
- If the fuzzily described protocells ever really existed, why do they not exist today? Darwinians assure us that they would all be eaten by more complex life forms. But that can’t be right. There is nothing unusual about less complex life forms destroying more complex ones. Bacteria can destroy humans after all.
- If life can spontaneously self-organize, why does it not do so today? Our planet is well suited to carbon-based life. Yet billions of years later, life arises only from life.
Some offer a simple solution: We will create life in the lab by setting up the exact right natural conditions!
Excellent. Then, we will have demonstrated that intelligent design can create life via carefully studied, expertly chosen and controlled conditions. But that was never under dispute. And the claim that such an event occurred spontaneously is not demonstrated this way.
At present, the origin of life does not seem to be a scientific question in the sense that there is a method of science available that can determine an answer. It is generally treated like a political question where some answers are Correct Groupthink but others will get you Canceled. It’s not clear that the current approach will enable many more insights.
Cross-posted at Mind Matters News.