[MHGinTN]

The numbers are ... staggering aren't they! IIRC, it used to be stated that there are only like 10¹²⁰ atoms in the Universe. At Reasons.org, Ross&CO are adding to the impossibility of spontaneous eruption of intelligent life, nearly every week. Even Physicists are beginning to come around to the idea that an inteliigence is behind the creation of the Universe and especially existence of intelligent life therein.

[Kevmo]

If ALL the 10^120 atoms in the universe were available at every second in the last 15 billion years (i.e., the age of the universe) for these abiogenesis reactions and you popped those assumptions into the Drake equation, I think you’d end up with the SETI project being off by only 20,000 orders of magnitude rather than the generated figure. It is still... utterly... impossible.