Nick Lane

but not necessarily in the oceans or in the atmosphere or anywhere else.

I mean, not just the atmosphere, but also the whole of geology.

Hundreds of minerals are basically the product of life.

I mean, I think to get to nucleotides...

From nucleotides, you've then got to get to RNA and DNA and ribosomes and molecular machines.

So there's a long gap there as well.

So just having nucleotides, it's a requirement to get any further.

Well, a lower fraction, obviously.

Right.

Over a billion?

I mean, I would like to be, let's say, optimistic.

I would like to think that these processes are going to drive life into existence on a substantial proportion of these planets or moons.

And I would expect that there would be similarities in the genetic code.

I would expect that a lot of metabolism would look similar.

I would expect that they would have a membrane potential driving the kind of

work because it's fun you know if you're dealing with co2 and hydrogen you've got this same fundamental problem how do you make them react yeah but so basically there's hundreds of millions of planets in the milky way which like presumably have something like ribosomes and uh dna to get to rna yes i i that's my that's my own thinking i i don't i don't i i think

We're talking about serious planetary driving forces driving fairly deterministic chemistry that's going to give you the same kind of intermediates, which are going to have the same kind of chemistry, the same kind of feedback.

So they're going to push things into similar directions.

Now, the further from CO2 fixation towards genetics you get, the less similarity there's going to be.

Yes, I mean, I agree with you.