You provided a set of assumptions/numbers to suggest
that life could be plentiful. That's your "equation",
vaguely a different kind of "Drake Equation".
"I *think* I read was something like 10^55. So in
a chunk of space not that very large -- about 12
million LY on a side -- there is a potential for
all possible cubic meters of space to be enumerated.
If life pops up anywhere and has the property "that
which if it pops up anywhere will get everywhere"
then it's everywhere"
Take credit/blame for your own work :-)
HOWEVER - first actual evidence - our "neighborhood" -
nothing much but super/sub-earths that are either
super-hot or very cold or horribly irradiated. Not
very favorable to ANY kind of life emerging - much
less anything WE might recognize as such.
> We are hip deep in life.
Only HERE - and it's ALL THE SAME THING, no completely
novel evolutionary lines with seriously different
biochemistry. You're looking at variation/evolution
of ONE primordial life form. Nothing else has ever
been found - and not for lack of looking anymore.
> With most "dont look up" folks knowing only
> the possibilities in the same room as them, they anyway note that life
> on earth emerged very early after "suitable conditions arose",
> then proceeded to get everywhere it could from the top of the atm to
> dozens of miles underground. From the hottest deserts to ice cold
> isolated lakes under the Antarctic ice sheet.
> There are billions of tons of life on earth.
>
> If this is your only model it might say a lot of about "life in
> the universe".
"Life", to DEVELOP, will need fairly stable conditions
over a fairly long period so all the necessary chems/
structures can form in a coordinated self-supporting
fashion. AFTER it develops then evolution can drive it
in a number of directions over time, from cold algae
goop to extremophiles in boiling waters to, perhaps,
with luck, multi-cellular forms. Once you have the
functional template, something that *works*, much might
be done with it. Also, mutable DNA is only ONE way to
run lifeforms ... more stable, less mutable, chemical
structures could exist, but you wouldn't get nearly as
much evolution/variability.
Again, sorry, no "Federation" because there won't be
anyone to federate with - at least not in this galaxy.
NO reason/evidence to assume otherwise.
In any case, and this was Drake's flaw, you cannot
just use THIS planet to predict the chances of
life anywhere else.
SO - I'm gonna guess at ONE intelligent life form
per galaxy, and that there's no way around lightspeed.
That's still about 250,000,000 intelligent lifeforms,
but they'll never meet/communicate.