If it holds up, the antiquity of Luca seems to overturn some earlier arguments for why the universe is largely lifeless. “These have been based on the evidence that it took about a billion years for life to emerge on Earth, meaning that these early steps were hard and/or unlikely,” says Donoghue. But a 4.2bn-year-old and already rather highly evolved Luca, Lenton says, “tells us that [starting] life is not that hard. It can start all over the place on planets with liquid water, possibly including early Mars or even early Venus.”
Astronomical searches for planets around other stars have suggested that Earth-like planets are not all that uncommon. Still, there might have been special features of our planet, Anderson cautions, that made it particularly amenable to life, such as a magnetic field to shield us from solar radiation, a large neighbouring planet (Jupiter) to sweep up stray asteroids, and a moon to create tides.
— Read on www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jan/19/luca-is-the-progenitor-of-all-life-on-earth-but-its-genesis-has-implications-far-beyond-our-planet
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