There is no getting around the fact that a lot of people would be very excited if extraterrestrial life existed. But while plenty of scientists are working hard to find it, others aren’t as convinced—and a team of Princeton physicists has gone as far as publishing an academic article explaining exactly why they think we’re all living in a fantasy land.

In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Edwin Turner and David Spiegel, two astrophysicists from Princeton, analyze what is known about the likelihood of life on other planets using Bayesian analysis. They weigh up how many of our existing scientific conclusions about life on other planets stem from actual, real data, and how many come from the prior assumptions of scientists.
via Gizmodo

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